EFJ welcomes the award of the Sakharov Prize to the democratic opposition in Belarus

The democratic opposition in Belarus has won this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, European Parliament President David Sassoli announced today. The Sakharov Prize is awarded by the European Parliament every year in memory of Soviet physicist and dissident Andrei Sakharov. The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) welcomes the award of the prize to the Belarusian opposition and recalls that six journalists are still in prison in Belarus just for doing their job. Protests erupted in Belarus following a disputed presidential election in August that Alexander Lukashenko claimed to have won with 80 percent of the vote, leading to…