Ressa, Muratov … and Nobel reflections

Syed Badrul AhsanSyed Badrul Ahsan
Published : 11 Oct 2021, 06:44 PM
Updated : 11 Oct 2021, 06:44 PM

In recent times, the Nobel Prize, especially the ones dedicated to contributions to peace and literature, have sometimes come under a cloud. Questions have been raised about the award to individuals who perhaps did not qualify for it. One recalls the 1973 peace award to Vietnam's Le Duc Tho and America's Henry Kissinger. The former spurned it, for it was his belief that peace was yet an illusion in his war-ravaged country. The latter accepted it with alacrity. And there have been those other questions, one related to the Nobel Committee's not giving the prize to Gandhi. Again, Dag Hammarskjoeld was awarded the prize posthumously for his efforts to bring peace to the Congo, but since that moment the prize has not gone to any individual who has passed on after making a signal contribution to global peace. Again, Jimmy Carter should have received the prize soon after he brought about the Camp David Accord between Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin. Ironically, his Nobel came a good many years after the Egyptian and Israeli leaders had received theirs.

There are too the very relevant reservations on the award of the prize for literature to the Austrian writer Peter Handke, whose notoriety in supporting Slobodan Milosevic and in denying genocide in Bosnia in the 1990s remains well-known. In 1960, the Soviet government of Nikita Khrushchev compelled Boris Pasternak to forgo the Nobel he had been awarded for Doctor Zhivago. Four years later, Jean-Paul Sartre declined to accept the literature Nobel because he did not want his reputation to be based on being the recipient of the award. Questions have been raised on whether planting trees calls for a Nobel, on whether geographical balance rather than absolute merit should be an adequate measure in judging literary works for the award of the Nobel. Besides, to what degree did the young Malala Yusufzai deserve the Nobel for peace, given that there are thousands of young people who have equally suffered in numerous conflict zones in Asia, Africa and Latin America but whose struggles have clearly been sidelined? Barack Obama was given the award for peace even before he had anything to show by way of global performance as President. And let no one forget that for all his immeasurable contributions to science, Stephen Hawking did not come by the prize. Bangladesh's Jamal Nazrul Islam, a remarkable physicist and cosmologist, was ignored by the Nobel Committee.

Such questions will be there, as there will be questions around the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov this year. There will be the naysayers who might and indeed will argue as to whether fighting for the rights of a profession is a contribution to the making of a peaceful global order in the way that Martin Luther King Jr's struggle for civil rights in the United States was in the 1960s. Indeed, thousands of journalists all across the world — in Turkey, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Rwanda, Egypt, Belarus and so many other places — have been waging a long battle for freedom of expression and paying a price for it. How is it that the Nobel Committee has never taken that reality into cognizance in making its choices every year? Karan Thapar in India has been waging a courageous battle against political extremism in his country. Turkish President Recep Tayyep Erdogan has jailed journalists on the questionable charge that they were part of a plot to remove his government by force. In Malta and Russia, the journalists Daphne Caruana Galizia and Anna Politkovskaya were murdered by elements unhappy with their investigative journalism. Perhaps the Nobel Committee could have, with the Hammarskjoeld precedent in mind, celebrated their struggle through posthumous awards for them? Or perhaps the committee could have zeroed in on Angela Merkel, for the humanism she brought into her treatment of refugees and for the quality of her leadership, and given her the award for peace this year?

These and similar questions will be there, now and in the years ahead. But what will and must be acknowledged is that the peace award to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov will act as a spur to journalists who have always struggled to uphold the truth, throughout the diversity of geography, against all manner of repression and attempts at repression of the media. Ressa has suffered immensely under the Duterte government; and Muratov has, in the difficult circumstances that the Russian media have been operating in, remains a symbol of forbearance and courage. The Nobel for them is in broad measure a tribute to all brave journalists around the globe, those who have in the face of adversity never caved in before the powers that be despite the enormity of the authority applied to silence them. The two award winners are a reminder of what good, powerful and purposeful journalism is or can be, given that in our times we have had the good fortune of learning from the courage of media personalities who have passed on. Nikhil Chakravartty, Kuldip Nayar, Salamat Ali, Dan Rather, Jeremy Paxman, Tim Sebastian and so many others have enlightened our world with their courage and with their wisdom.

The award to Ressa and Muratov is a warning to intolerant governments everywhere that at the end of the day the triumph is that of truth, that all attempts at suppressing the media only burn down the citadels of untruth. It is a message to authoritarian regimes everywhere that jailing journalists or raiding their offices or charging them with treason or harassing them with intimidation as means of frightening them into kowtowing before the unbridled powers of the state do not work. It is a hint that journalists are in a large way conscience keepers of society, that they impart to people the very fundamental lessons relating to human rights, accountability and transparency, that they thereby keep ruling classes and would-be rulers on their toes through digging deep, all the way to the roots, into corruption and eventually emerging with the truth. That journalists are not enemies of the state, that indeed they are the best guarantors, in our times, of the security and stability of the state from within and without is the magnificent idea now reinforced by the Nobel Prize for Peace coming to Maria Ressa in Manila and Dmitry Muratov in Moscow.