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Mano Ganesan bags top HR award
Leading
Sri Lankan human rights activist and Member of Parliament Mano Ganesan
has been chosen as the first runner-up of the Freedom Defender’s
Award.
The winners were announced on December 10 in Washington by US Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice.
The recipient of the first annual Freedom Defender’s Award
was the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, chosen out of an impressive
group of nominees from across the globe. The Freedom Defenders Award,
announced last year in commemoration of International Human Rights
Day, goes to a foreign individual or non-governmental organisation
that has shown exceptional courage and leadership in the defence
of human rights.
“The First Runner-up for this award was Mano Ganesan, a leading
Sri Lankan human rights activist and Member of Parliament.
Mr. Ganesan has been in the forefront of those seeking an end to
the abductions, disappearances and extra-judicial killings that
afflict Sri Lanka. He has demonstrated commendable integrity
in combating the climate of impunity for human rights violators,”
the US Embassy in Colombo said in a news release.
According to the statement, in 2006 Mano Ganesan founded the Civil
Monitoring Commission on Extra-Judicial Killings and Disappearances
(CMC), based in Colombo, and continues to serve as the CMC Convener.
He
has shown enormous personal courage and dedication in exposing crimes
against Sri Lanka’s several minority communities, including
the country’s Muslims. Relatives of those abducted, “disappeared”
and killed, often turn first to the CMC to try to obtain information
of their loved ones or secure their release.
Mano Ganesan, describing his mission as a representative of the
voiceless, said: “I am speaking against injustice, and my cause
is to achieve human dignity and human rights for the people of this
country who are placed in a deliberate and unfortunate situation
in an extremist political climate.”
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