Activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, will be awarded the will be posthumously given the Anna Politkovskaya Award this year, making her the first Indian to receive the honor, her family said on Thursday.
Lankesh will share the annual award, instituted in memory of a Russian investigative reporter Anna Politkovskaya, with Pakistani activist Gulalai Ismail.
Ismail is fighting rightwing extremism in Pakistan. The award is conferred by London-based organization RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War), and the announcement about Lankesh winning it was made to the media in Bengaluru by her mother Indira, brother Indrajit and sister Kavitha Lankesh.
“Today, we received an email from Russia that my sister has been chosen for the Anna Politkovskaya Award. She is the first Indian recipient of the award,” Kavitha said. “Anna was an activist-journalist just like my sister. She was killed on October 7, 2006, when she was in a lift. Five people accosted her and poisoned her,” she said, quoting from the email.
She was killed for speaking up against the human rights violations in then-restive Chechnya province of Russia and exposing corruption.
“In her name, the award has been instituted exclusively for women, to honor those who work towards upholding the human dignity, especially of women and children,” she said.
She expressed unhappiness over speculative stories appearing in the media. Gauri Lankesh, the founder-editor of the ‘Gauri Lankesh Patrike’ and known to be an anti-establishment voice, was shot dead by unidentified men outside her residence on September 5. Her assassination came days after the second anniversary of the killing of Kannada writer and rationalist M M Kalburgi, who fell to bullets fired by two unidentified men at his residence at Dharwad in north Karnataka in August 2015.
Post Your Comments