Lamiya Aji Bashar

The Venezuelan opposition has received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which the European Parliament gives annually.

The European Parliament on Oct. 27 awarded its Sakharov Prize to Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, two Iraqi Yazidi women who were held as sex slaves by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants and have campaigned for human rights since escaping. 

Two Yazidi women who survived sexual enslavement by Islamic State before escaping and becoming advocates for their people in Iraq have won the EU’s Sakharov human rights prize.
Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar were abducted along with other Yazidi women in August 2014 when their home village of Kocho in northern Iraq was attacked by Isis jihadis.

The wife of prominent Turkish journalist Can Dündar has said she is not in favor of her husband's return to Turkey, citing legal uncertainties surrounding his lengthy prosecution and security concerns that peaked after he was shot at outside an Istanbul court on his trial day.   

Former daily Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dündar has been named among the nominees of the European Parliament's (EP) prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2016.