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'Alternative Honorary Nobel' for Mexican
DPA
Stockholm, Sep 29 (DPA) The 2005 Right Livelihood Awards, better known as the Alternative Nobel Prizes, were awarded Thursday to recipients from Mexico, Canada, Malaysia and Botswana.
The prizes are presented at an annual ceremony in the Swedish parliament a week before the Nobel Peace Prize winner is announced in neighbouring Norway.
The Right Livelihood Honorary Award, which carries no prize money, went to Mexican artist and philanthropist Francisco Toledo for his promotion of the heritage, arts and environment of his native Oaxaca.
The 65-year-old artist has been a founder and patron of a number of cultural institutions in the Mexican state and has also led campaigns to protect Oaxaca city from excessive development.
The Right Livelihood Award, with a prize of two million Swedish kronor ($230,000), was shared by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke from Canada, Irene Fernandez from Malaysia, and the organisation First People of the Kalahari and its founder Roy Sesana, from Botswana.
Barlow and Clarke were commended for their longstanding activism on issues relating to trade, including universal access to water.
The jury saluted Irene Fernandez, a human rights campaigner facing a prison sentence in Malaysia for supposedly publishing false news about migrant workers, for her "outstanding and courageous work" to prevent violence against women and abuses of low-paid workers.
The third co-winner of the award, Roy Sesana, is a leader of the Gana, Gwi and Bakgalagadi "Bushmen" in Botswana. In 1991, he was one of the founders of the First People of the Kalahari, which has successfully resisted eviction from their ancestral lands.
Founded in 1980 by the German-Swedish writer and lecturer Jakob von Uexkuell, the Right Livelihood Awards pay tribute to people who set standards of civic responsibility and personal sacrifice.
Indo-Asian News Service
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