The international jury of the Bruno Kreisky Prize for services to human rights unanimously awarded the Bruno Kreisky Human Rights Prize to the Turkish author Aslı Erdoğan for her outstanding services to safeguarding human rights. The Bruno Kreisky Prize for Human Rights was named after the late Austrian Chancellor Bruno Kreisky and is the oldest renowned human rights prize in Austria (http://www.kreisky.org/human.rights/index.htm).
Throughout her life, the woman who Aslı Erdoğan did research as a physicist at CERN in Geneva and who was a “writer in exile” guest at the International House of Authors in Graz from 2012 to 2013, has been actively and unreservedly committed to the implementation of human rights .
In all her publications, the committed human rights activist Erdogan uses the manifestations of suffering and injustice, which she traces again and again, as a benchmark for orientation.
Ms. Aslı Erdoğan is currently being prosecuted in Turkey. She was charged with four separate crimes, including her column and membership of an advisory board in a Kurdish newspaper. She was arrested on charges of destroying the unity and integrity of the state and membership of a terrorist organization. She was released on bail on December 29, 2016, but is banned from traveling abroad. The next trial date is March 14th.
The Bruno Kreisky Human Rights Prize for the writer Aslı Erdoğan is also a sign against massive restrictions on human rights.