AFP, Oslo, 10 Dec 2011 – The 2011 peace prize should serve as a warning to dictators in places like Syria and Yemen that their days are numbered, the head of the Nobel committee said during the award ceremony in Oslo Saturday.
‘The leaders in Yemen and Syria who murder their people to retain their own power should take note of the following: mankind’s quest for freedom and human rights can never stop,’ Thorbjoern Jagland said before giving the prestigious prize to the three winners: Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, her compatriot and ‘peace warrior’ Leymah Gbowee and Yemeni ‘Arab Spring’ activist Tawakkol Karman.
‘No dictator can in the long run find shelter from this wind of history. it was this wind which led people to crawl up onto the berlin wall and tear it down. It is the wind that is now blowing in the Arab world,’ he said.
the fight for freedom had already led Yemen’s leader for the past 33 years, president Ali Abdullah Saleh, to agree to step down early next year and it would eventually end Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s bloody hold on power, Jagland said.
‘President Saleh was not able and President Assad in Syria will not be able to resist the people’s demand for freedom and human rights,’ he insisted.
The three laureates, he said, represented each in their way ‘the most important motive forces for change in today’s world, the struggle for human rights in general and the struggle of women for equality and peace in particular.’