5 yıl önce

Swedish journalist returns Nobel prize in protest of genocide denier Handke

Christina Doctare said she had witnessed the Bosnian massacre 27 years ago and was returning her prize over the Nobel Committee’s decision to award Peter Handke.

Swedish journalist Christina Doctare will return her 1988 Nobel Peace Prize to the Royal Swedish Academy on Tuesday in protest against the awarding of the 2019 literature prize to Austrian writer Peter Handke.

Handke denies the 1995 Bosnian genocide and is a supporter of late Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic.

The 77-year-old Handke was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature despite his open support of Milosevic, who died of a heart attack in his prison cell in 2006 while being tried for war crimes and genocide at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Nobel laureate shows more respect for the prize that the Nobel committee. Brava, Christina Doctare! https://t.co/AwOJ6n5eMY
— Bobby Ghosh (@ghoshworld) December 11, 2019

Handke also claimed that Muslim Bosniaks in Sarajevo had killed themselves and said he never believed that the Serbs had committed genocide in Srebrenica.

Doctare also spoke during protests in the capital, Stockholm, against Handke's award.

"I was proud of the Swedish Academy, but all I feel now is shame and guilt," she said.

"I witnessed the genocide firsthand 27 years when I was there. I am going to return the Nobel prize over the fact that Peter Handke, who denies the genocide that took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina, received it too," she added.

SOURCE: AA