European Union Nominates Snowden for Sakharov Human Rights Prize that Celebrates Freedom of Thought

It has always been said that one man's villain is another's hero. One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. The onus of nomenclature lies with the side viewing such an individual. Apparently, when a particular section has the upper voice and hand through the media and 'Superpower' force respectively, its version will tend to sell above all others.

Such is the perfect case of Snowden but not centrally exclusive because the world is wiser as it concerns those who might naturally buy Washington's stance too. Had it been the European Union was not involved in the espionage game, it would have joined the White House in condemning Snowden as a villain and rebuked Russia for granting him asylum.

It happened that members of the European Parliament cannot conceal their joyous shock on the revelation of Edward Snowden, hence have officially nominated the whistleblower and former CIA employee for the prestigious Sakharov human rights prize which celebrates freedom of thought. The prize is named after the Soviet dissident scientist Andrey Sakharov and honours people and organizations for their work in defending human rights and freedom of thought.

Andrey Sakharov was a physicist who designed the Soviet Hydrogen Bomb but soon after began to regret what he had done and became a campaigner for the destruction of all nuclear weapons.  He became an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the Soviet Union. He paid the price trying to rid the world of those terrible weapons. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

Snowden, a computer specialist and former contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA) leaked classified files of US government and UK surveillance programmes, including spying on their closest allies, to the media. There was a massive manhunt for him especially when speculations about where his final destination would be were not known.

This even led to the embarrassment of the Bolivian President by some European countries when they blocked their airspace thinking Snowden was on board and forced his aircraft to land in Vienna. The US employed all means including threat and blackmail to cajole countries into not accepting him.

Leaders of the parliament's Greens group Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Rebecca Harms said in a statement that Edward Snowden "deserves to be honoured for shedding light on the systematic infringements of civil liberties by US and European secret services. Snowden has risked his freedom to help us protect ours."

He was granted temporary asylum in Russia in late July despite repeated requests for him to be extradited by Washington. Snowden was put forward as a candidate by the European United Left/Nordic Green Left faction. Christian Engstrom from the Swedish Pirate Party, who co-nominated Snowden for the award, said that the whistleblower has paid “a heavy personal price” for his “heroic” actions.

The official presentation of all the candidates for the Sakharov Prize will take place on 16 September, next Monday, the winner will be announced in October and the awards ceremony will take place in Strasbourg in December. Previous laureates of the Sakharov Prize include Nelson Mandela, Chinese dissident Hu Jia and Reporters without Borders, a French based NGO that fights for freedom of the press. The winner receives a prize of 50,000 euros.