Legendary Advocate for Freedom, Democracy and Human Rights Natan Sharansky Awarded 2020 Genesis Prize - Seite 2

Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said: "Natan Sharansky is a hero, whose courage united people all over the globe in a quest for freedom. He is a distinguished leader who made a significant contribution to the State of Israel, to the people who lived in oppressed societies of the Soviet bloc nations, and to humanity as a whole. I congratulate Natan on this prestigious global award."

Natan Sharansky first gained global renown in the 1970s as a leader of the Soviet dissident movement, where he worked alongside Nobel Prize Laureate Andrei Sakharov, demanding that the USSR live up to its international human rights obligations. Arrested for his challenge to the Soviet regime, he spent nine years incarcerated as a Prisoner of Conscience – much of it in solitary confinement –refusing to disavow his demands for respect of human rights for all oppressed people of the Soviet Union.

Unbroken, Sharansky was released in 1986 following an intense international pressure campaign, spearheaded by his wife Avital. His release became the symbolic prelude to the unraveling of the communist regimes throughout the Soviet bloc in the late 1980's.

Since moving to Israel, Sharansky continued his activist work and emerged as an influential political thinker. He authored three best-selling books, making the case for freedom, democracy and human rights. During his time in government –including as Deputy Prime Minister – and as the head of the Jewish Agency for Israel, Sharansky fought tirelessly for the rights of new immigrants, religious minorities, and women. At the helm of the Jewish Agency, he focused on repatriation of Jews to Israel, strengthening the links between Israel and global Jewry, and made an effort to develop separate, egalitarian prayer space near the Western Wall.

Natan Sharansky said: "I am humbled by this honor and thank the Genesis Prize Foundation for recognizing my work to promote democracy, rule of law, and human rights. As my personal hero President Ronald Reagan said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not passed to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like to live when men were free."