Jeanine Áñez among the finalists for the European Parliament Sakharov Prize

The former interim president of Bolivia Jeanine Áñez, currently under arrest, is one of the finalists for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize, along with the Russian opposition Alexei Navalny and a group of Afghan women, the institution reported on Thursday.

The group of Afghan activists is led by Shahrzad Akbar, president of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, in a candidacy that was launched by the Social Democratic and Green blocs.

They also participate in that group Mary Akrami, director of the Afghan Women’s Network (which provides shelter to women victims of family violence) and Zarifa Ghafari, one of the first women mayors in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, the candidacy of Áñez It was launched by the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists bench, in which the Spanish group Vox participates.

Áñez She became president of Bolivia in 2019 in the middle of the process that caused the fall of the government of Evo Morales.

However, in March of this year she was arrested on charges of conspiracy in the events that led to the fall of the Morales government, in a social upheaval that left several dead.

Finally, Navalni was proposed by the largest bench in Parliament, that of the conservative European People’s Party.

The activist became a celebrity for his allegations of corruption in Russia and was the subject of an apparent poisoning in August 2020.

Navalni recovered from Germany and upon returning to Russia was arrested and sentenced to jail in a process for failing to appear in a timely manner for periodic probation checks, for a prior sanction for corruption.

In last year’s edition, the award had been awarded to the “democratic opposition” to the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.

The award was first awarded by the European Parliament in 1988, and is named after the Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov, who in those years was a renowned figure of dissidence to the Soviet Union.

In that first edition, the South African leader Nelson Mandela and (posthumously) the Soviet dissident Anatoli Márchenko were awarded.

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