MOSCOW -- The European Union's parliament on Thursday awarded its annual Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought to three prominent Russian rights activists, in recognition of the difficult conditions they face in defending human rights in Russia today.
The prize was awarded to Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Sergei Kovalyov and Oleg Orlov on behalf of the human rights organization Memorial and "all other human rights defenders in Russia," parliament President Jerzy Buzek said in announcing the prize in Brussels. All three recipients are leading critics of the Kremlin.
The group was founded two decades ago to memorialize the victims of Stalinist oppression but quickly expanded to cover a broad array of civil-society development issues.
"This award gives me great joy, because it is a recognition of the great achievements we, the Russian rights movement as a whole, have made despite the hardships we have suffered," said Orlov, 56, who heads Memorial.
Human rights activists and journalists who work with them have been threatened, beaten and in some cases killed in recent years. Natalya Estemirova, a Memorial activist in Chechnya, was abducted and killed in July.
"In the last few years they have simply started killing us off," Orlov said.
Estemirova was nominated for the prize alongside Kovalyov in 2004.
"This is a prize for her," Orlov said.
Alexeyeva, 82, and Kovalyov, 79, were both leading Soviet dissidents and have continued to lead the fight for democracy and human rights in Russia.
"This is a very great honor," said Alexeyeva, who heads the Moscow Helsinki Group "It is from the European Union, which has exactly the kind of respect for human rights that we fight for every day in Russia."
"But it is sad, in a way, also," Alexeyeva said, recalling that the last time she shared an international award with Kovalyov _ the Olof Palme Prize in 2004 _ Anna Politkovskaya was a co-recipient. Politkovskaya, a journalist who exposed corruption and rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead in Moscow in 2006.
"Things are easier than they were in Soviet days. Though these days opponents are sometimes killed rather than imprisoned," Alexeyeva said.
Kovalyov, who spent seven years in the Gulag, has been unyielding in his criticism of the new Russia and Vladimir Putin, who rolled back many of the democratic achievements of the 1990s.
Kovalyov and Alexeyeva are contemporaries of the late Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet dissident for whom the prize is named.
The Sakharov Prize is considered the EU's top rights award and comes with a euro50,000 honorarium. It will be awarded Dec. 16 at the EU parliament in Strasbourg, France.
The prize has been awarded since 1988, and previous winners include former South African President Nelson Mandela, East Timorese leader Xanana Gusmao and Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya.
Often the prize has chilled relations with the government of the recipient's country. Last year, China's government reacted angrily when the jailed dissident Hu Jia won. Beijing called him a criminal and said the Sakharov award amounted to political interference.
The major political groups in the European Parliament welcomed the announcement.
"Twenty years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, this historic moment sends a strong signal to EU leaders meeting in Brussels next week to also speak with one voice on the critical question of human rights in Russia," said Rebecca Harms, the co-president of the Greens/EFA group.
"I also hope that this year's Sakharov Prize will boost the EU's resolve to prioritize the human rights issue at next month's EU-Russia summit," she added. The leaders of both sides will meet in Stockholm on Nov. 18.
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Associated Press writer Raf Casert in Brussels contributed to this report.
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