Savchenko wins Jan Karski Eagle Award
Nadiya Savchenko has become the winner of prestigious Polish Jan Karski Award. Savchenko was given the award for her tempered heart in the fight for human dignity and pride, Radio Poland reported.
By Savchenko’s conduct in the face of trumped up charges, she provides a shining example of a person who can be deprived of life but can’t be broken. “Currently, Savchenko is on a hunger strike,” the jury of the award reported. Jan Karski established the Jan Karski Eagle Award in 2000, not long before his death.
Karski was a Polish diplomat who reported to the world about the Holocaust. His award is presented to Polish citizens who take care of Poland with dignity, as well as citizens of other nationalities who support Poland. In 2015, the Jan Karski Eagle Award was awarded posthumously for the first time to Boris Nemtsov. Other past awardees include Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Lech Walesa, Adam Michnik, Marek Edelman and Shimon Peres.
Nadiya Savchenko has been charged with the murder of two Russian journalists. It is widely believed that Savchenko was in fact captured by Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) separatists in eastern Ukraine and was illegally transported to Russia, where the case was fabricated against her.
Savchenko was elected to the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada in absentia in October of 2014, and became an official delegate of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe several months later.
On March 2nd, the prosecutor’s office requested that she be sentenced to 23 years in a penal colony plus a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,400).
Savchenko declared a dry hunger strike on March 3rd after the Donetsk City Court in the Rostov region announced that she would not be given a chance to make her final closing statement during a court hearing.