Father Stan Swamy, the late Indian Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist, has been posthumously awarded the Martin Ennals Award, regarded as the Nobel Prize for human rights defenders.
Eighty-four-year-old Father Swamy, who was arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case and died in custody in July 2021, was accorded the honour by the Martin Ennals Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Though the award was presented posthumously, the priest was chosen for it while he was still alive. “Father Stan was nominated for the award in spring 2021, but he sadly passed away before it could reach him,” said Hans Thoolen, chair of the award jury.
The jury wished to shine a light on the priest’s many contributions to human rights, which “cannot be eclipsed by his unjust incarceration by Indian authori-ties,” Thoolen added.
Father Xavier Soreng, a social activist and colleague of the late Jesuit, accepted the award in Geneva on June 2. Three other rights activists — Dr. Daouda Diallo from Burkina Faso, Pham Doan Trang from Vietnam and Abdul Hadi Al-Khawaja from Bahrain — were also honored.
Father Soreng narrated a brief life sketch of Father Swamy and his pioneering work for the welfare of the indigenous people of eastern India’s Jharkhand state. “It is true Father Swamy became an irritant in the eyes of the pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party for his stand against uprooting indigenous peoples from their habitats and had to pay with his life”