site.btaFight Before It Is Too Late, Urges Award-winning Journalist Mzia Amaglobeli from Georgian Prison

Fight before it is too late - this message from the Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli, sentenced to two years in prison, which has become the leitmotif of the statements by her representatives and supporters during the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, was the focus of her prison speech at the Tuesday ceremony.

Mzia’s letter was read out by Gazeti Batumelebi's journalist Irma Dimitradze.

On behalf of Amaglobeli, she accepted the Andrei Sakharov Prize, awarded for freedom of thought, while the prize of the other laureate – the Belarusian journalist from the Polish minority Andrzej Poczobut – was received by his daughter Jana.

"This House stands in solidarity with Andrzej and Mzia in their struggle. We call for their immediate release along with every person wrongfully imprisoned. Our determination will match the courage of those wrongly jailed and those still suffering behind bars. We will keep up the pressure until everyone is free," said European Parliament President Roberta Metsola in her keynote address at the ceremony. 

"I am a citizen of a country which is on the verge of losing hard-fought democracy and independence. I am a journalist whose profession has been criminalized. Who does not know how to write a simple news in a way that these hostile legislations that the regime has adopted in our country do not put me in jail," Dimitradze said at the beginning of her speech.

"If my own mother, a single mother of two, raised me as a person in hardship and poverty, Mzia raised me as a professional - she is like a mother to me. It's been terrible days when I have to wake up with uncertainty fearing for her life. And it's been terrible days during which now I am waiting to receive the results of medical examinations which were conducted very late and that will let us know if there is a chance to retain the 10% eyesight in one of her eyes. There is only light perception in the other," she added.

After those words, Dimitradze read Amaglobeli's speech:

"Fight with us and for us. Fight as you would fight for the freedom of your own countries. Use every mechanism at your disposal and do so before it is too late", reads the statement by the journalist, who is serving her sentence in a women’s penal colony in the Georgian city of Rustavi. “Fight before it’s too late” was also the slogan printed on Dimitradze’s T-shirt.

"Receiving the highest human rights award from you is a great honor and a great responsibility and I accept it on behalf of my colleagues, the journalists who are now fighting in Georgia to save journalism as such. They work tirelessly to make sure that you hear the voice of resistance of Georgia’s citizens, that the truth is not silenced. [...] This regime is ruthless: it beats, fines, arrests, and blackmails protesters. It destroys free journalism, abolishes opposition political parties and imprisons their leaders, effectively dismantles non-governmental organizations, labels those who work in them as “foreign agents”, and — as we recently learned from a BBC investigative documentary — allegedly poisons citizens using toxic chemical substances. The allegation that requires international investigation", Amaglobeli's speech reads.

"I believe in free, democratic and strong Europe!", Amaglobeli states at the end of her speech.

The daughter of Andrzej Poczobut – Jana – also took to the podium of the European Parliament.

"For our family this moment is deeply emotional. For almost five years now my family has lived in silence, uncertainty and the absence of someone we love. Today, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the European Parliament for remembering him and for remembering all families who live with the same unanswered questions," Jana Poczobut said.

"Behind every name we read in reports, there is a home, a story and people who wait. My father is not only a public figure - he's a husband, a son, a friend. And every day of these five years, we have not known how he is, if he is safe. Yet every day, we choose hope, because hope is the only thing that has not been taken from us", she added.

“And my family is not alone. There are many families whose stories echo ours,” emphasised the daughter of the Belarusian journalist, who is serving an eight-year sentence in the penal colony in Novopolotsk, concluding with an address to families facing a similar fate: “I wish you strength. I wish you peace. And I hope that one day every story will receive its answer.”

The prize bearing the name of Andrei Sakharov is the EU’s highest distinction in the field of human rights. Since 1988 it has been awarded annually to individuals or organisations as recognition of their work in one of the following areas: the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms, particularly freedom of expression; the protection of minority rights; respect for international law; the development of democracy; and the defence of the rule of law, the EP press service stated.

Academician Sakharov (1921–1989) was one of the creators of the Soviet hydrogen bomb (1950–1953). The defender of human rights and civil liberties in the Soviet Union was arrested on January 22, 1980 following his protests against the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops and was internally exiled to the city of Gorky (present-day Nizhny Novgorod). In 1973 he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded on December 10, 1975 to his wife Yelena Bonner, as the Soviet government did not allow him to travel to receive it in person. He was released from exile on December 19, 1986.