The Edelstam Prize Award Ceremony 2024

Welcome to the Edelstam Prize Award Ceremony 2024

The Edelstam Prize 2024 was awarded this evening during a solemn and moving ceremony at the House of Nobility in Stockholm, Sweden. The laureate, Mr. Dawit Isaak, a Swedish-Eritrean journalist and the world’s longest-held arbitrarily detained journalist, was recognized for his exceptional courage in standing up for freedom of expression and human rights. As Mr. Isaak remains imprisoned and unable to attend, his daughter, Ms. Betlehem Isaak, received the prize on Mr, Isaak’s behalf.

CONTENTS

Video from the Edelstam Prize Award Ceremony 19 November

International greetings to the laureate

Video of Ms. Betlehem Isaak’s speech

Ms. Betlehem Isaak’s speech in text

On 19 November 2024, the imprisoned Swedish-Eritrean journalist Dawit Isaak was awarded the Edelstam Prize. At the award ceremony in the House of Nobility, Stockholm, Ms. Betlehem Isaak, accepted the award on behalf of her father. Dawit Isaak has been imprisoned in Eritrea since September 2001 and is the journalist in the world who has been imprisoned the longest. Here you find Ms. Betlehem Isaak’s Speech.

Distinguished guests of the Edelstam Foundation and the international community, Ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters.

In a different world I wouldn’t be here, and neither would you. But here we are.

Up until I was 7 years old me and my family lived a normal middle-class life in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, my first home. One day this would drastically change.

On an early Sunday morning in September 2001 two civilian men came to our house. Two men dressed in the same colour. The two men who sat in the red car who followed us home the day before. They knocked on our door and I opened, naively hoping it was one of my friends. Realising it wasn’t my friend my mom quickly came to greet them.  They asked for an Isaak and as normal Eritrean custom; my mom invited them into our home.

While my father was getting ready to meet them, they quietly admired our garden and the bookshelf’s surrounding our living room. A moment later we ate together – they ate from the cheese my grandfather had made, made nice small talk, laughed and enjoyed breakfast until one of them changed his tone. His voice became authoritative, he stood up, looked at my father and said “Dawit Nkid.” Dawit we have to go.

My father hugged us and told us “I will be back soon”. Through the key opening, I saw how they handcuffed him and ordered him to look down. That sight, that image is forever etched into my mind. As a child you might not have the capacity to express every feeling, but you sure feel it. Sometimes a life like this feels surreal, as someone once told me- “this only happens in movies”. But as time goes you learn to live with it, breath through it, you normalise it, but you never accept it.”

That Sunday morning those two men took my father away and changed my life forever. It’s been 23 years since – and a life has gone by.  I’ve lived in different cities, I’ve travelled, I’ve graduated, and I’ve even become a mother.

But who is my father Dawit Isaak – you may wonder. For me, he is my first love and my first teacher. He thought me how to read and write. No question I asked was neglected or seemed too hard to answer. One day while eating our melting gelatos, we walked past an old mosque, and I asked my father what kind of building that was- after a few minutes we were in the mosque and got a tour.

Another time I got to skip school because I wanted to go to work where the adults went. My father took me with him. I was fascinated, there were other nerds doing nerdy things. They were Reading, writing, talking on the phone, talking to each other, occasionally smoking and doing it all over again. As you can imagine I quickly got bored.

Before my father became a parent, he was a writer, a poet, an immigrant, a student. He was a young man in a new continent. He came to Sweden in the 1980:s fleeing Africa’s longest civil war. In 1991 Eritrea got its independence, and my father went back to be a part of a new, young and free nation. As many Eritreans like him, he had hope of a strong nation who respected democracy, rule of law, freedom of speech and human rights.

He and his colleagues started Setit, the first independent newspaper in Eritrea, it soon became the biggest newspaper influencing people to demand basic human rights.

Setit wrote about the importance of creating your own identity as a human rather than taking one that’s given to you – by your family, your religion, your ethnic background or your gender. They wrote about the right to own land, the right to education. They wrote about the shortage of water, and how hunger affected people on the lowlands. They also wrote about how discrimination and stigmatisation affected those living with HIV/AIDS and how this further spread the infection. Most importantly Setit gave the voiceless a voice. Eritreans who`d never been heard before because they were poor, uneducated or had an ethnic background that was looked down upon.

Setit wrote about the everyday life of Eritreans and scanned the Eritrean society, including the ruling party. Under the five years that Setit existed, the journalists were under constant threats, many of them were interrogated, sometimes for days – but they still stayed true to their readers and the ethics of journalism.

Authoritarian regimes like the Eritrean – Sees journalism and journalists who dare to defy the status quo as enemies, and hear me when I say this-  they always start with the journalists. When they arrested the journalists, they also cleared the Eritrean society of poets, writers, artists and scholars.

They created several lies framing them to an old idea of nation that never existed outside of their own imagination. They tell themselves and the Eritrean people about an enemy that’s always present. They tell you about vigilance and that we need our teenagers to do a military service- for some lasting for decades.  They tell you stories about your friends, your aunt, sister, cousin, father or brother, those who fled –  that they were traitors and that they deserved their destiny. By dying in the Mediterranean Sea. By dying in the hands of human traffickers. They tell you about their authority, and how it’s God-given. If you dare to question it, you’re questioning God and your punishment will be of biblical measures.

In her book “Kingdom of lies” Stacia Stark writes: “How do you control a population; you keep the people poor and uneducated – tell them the same lie for centuries and tie that lie to religion. Those people will believe you even when the truth is dancing naked in front of them. Because to believe otherwise would mean their entire world has always been a lie. And that realization is too difficult for some people to take.”

In a different world we wouldn’t have to be here- but here we are, this fight, this prize- is not only about freeing those imprisoned, it’s not only about my father, and the hope of a democratic process in Eritrea. It is also about courage, and I just know that the late Mr. Haralad Edelstam  must be smiling, his legacy is not only living by thousands of people going in his footsteps, its thriving because of his courageous granddaughter Caroline Edelstam and the Edelstam foundation.

This price it’s also about remembrance. To not forget those who stands for the freedom and rights most of us take for granted. It’s about speaking truth into existence and saying their names.

Seyoum Tsehaye

Yohannes Joshua Fessayhe

Amanuel Asrat

Maryana Zoltova,

Ludmila Chekina

Gui Minhai

Mohammed Oxygyn

Aslan Gurbanov

Meskerem Abera

Andrei Famin

Katarina Anderva

Roman Ivanov

Stanis Bujakera

Hatice Duman

Dawit Kebede Araya

Mustafa Gök

Nilofar Hamedi

Kingsley Njoka

Elahe Mohammedi

Mohammed Abu Zeid

Jimmy Lai

Sai Thaike

Ivan Faranov

Doan Keing gang

Jose ruben Zamora

Ahmadi Reza-Djalali

Victor ticay

Ahmet Birsin

Hamid Mahdaoui

Thomas Allan Ghambo

Sandra Mouhaza

Dawit Isaak

Thank you.