Peace Prize laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov are coming to Oslo to take part in the Nobel Peace Center’s Freedom of Expression Conference on 2 September.
Since they received the prize in December 2021 their situation have been worse, but they both continue to fight for a free and independent press.
“We are very happy to be able to present the two laureates on the same stage again, almost a year after the Nobel Peace Prize was announced,” says Nobel Peace Center Executive Director Kjersti Fløgstad, “Everything that has happened since then shows how important and relevant this prize was.”
Journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov were awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and in Russia.
The invasion of Ukraine, and Russia’s subsequent censorship of free media, has made it impossible for Dmitry Muratov to publish his newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, in Russia. However, his editors continue to work from Latvia and to find new ways of reaching out to their readers. After the son of the former dictator Fernando Marcos was elected president of the Philippines in May, the situation for Maria Ressa has become more difficult than earlier. She risks imprisonment for cyber libel and the news website Rappler, of which she is the editor, is threatened with closure.
Despite their worsening situations, both of these intrepid editors are still working to achieve what they were awarded the Peace Prize for: using freedom of expression to defend democracy and fight against abuse of power and misinformation.
“When Ressa and Muratov come to Oslo, we will get to hear their own versions of what has happened since they received the Nobel Peace Prize. Maria Ressa will also take part in a panel discussion on how social media affect democracy,” says Kjersti Fløgstad.
The Freedom of Expression Conference will be held at the Nobel Peace Center on Friday 2 September from 09.00 to 14.00. In addition to the two Peace Prize laureates from 2021, Colombia’s former president Juan Manuel Santos, who received the prize in 2016, is also on the list of speakers, along with a number of international experts on freedom of expression and press freedom.
After the conference, the Nobel Peace Center is hosting the Freedom of Expression Festival with an exciting program on Friday evening and outdoors on City Hall Square on the Saturday. The festival celebrates that it is almost a year since the Peace Prize for Ressa and Muratov was announced, and concludes the Peace Centre’s focus on themes related to the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021.