The slogan of the “Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights” is, “As the sun shines for everyone, freedom is a right for everyone.” Lovely, no? Especially at a moment when Qaddafi’s warplanes are raining down death and destruction on his own subject people, and when foreign mercenaries are brutalizing the population?
The prize description includes such gems as these:
The prize is awarded every year to one of the international personalities, bodies or organizations that have distinctively contributed to rendering an outstanding human service and has achieved great actions in defending Human rights, protecting the causes of freedom and supporting peace everywhere in the world.
. . . The Prize categorically believes that freedom is an indivisible natural right for Man; it is not a gift or grace from anybody, and that safeguarding it is a general human responsibility.
Past recipients of the prize have included Nelson Mandela (1989), “The Red Indians” (1991), Louis Farrakhan (1996), Fidel Castro (1998), and Hugo Chávez (2004).
But it’s the current recipient who is the most interesting: none other than the prime minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
