A film about Prince Claus Fund Laureate Fatos Lubonja shown during the 2015 Prince Claus Awards at the Royal Palace Amsterdam. (Produced by Brenninkmeijer & Isaacs)
On 2 December 2015, Fatos Lubonja received the Prince Claus Award from Honorary Chairman of the Prince Claus Fund HRH Prince Constantijn of the Netherlands. www.princeclausfund.org
From the 2015 Prince Claus Awards Committee Report:
Fatos Lubonja (1951, Tirana) is a journalist, author, television commentator and leading critical voice in his country, often shocking the nation into necessary reflection. Seventeen years of imprisonment for ‘agitation and propaganda’ - due to critical writings and for supposedly belonging to a dissident underground movement - only strengthened his fiercely democratic approach. While in solitary confinement, Lubonja wrote The Final Slaughter, a compelling Stalinist-Albanian re-interpretation of the Oedipus story, and later published The Second Sentence describing his incarceration and the totalitarian labyrinth. Released when everyone was praising the new so-called democratic government, Lubonja was one of the first to denounce the ongoing human rights abuses including those against his imprisoners, former functionaries of the deposed regime.
Consistently objective in his analysis and maintaining complete independence from all political parties, Lubonja speaks out against oppression and wrongdoing in different guises regardless of the perpetrator. He exposes the frauds and abuses of those in power as well as those who seek to replace them, both on the left and the right. His semi-fictional book The False Apocalypse reports his experience of the political struggle in 1997 and Albania’s descent into anarchy.
A regular contributor to newspapers and television, Lobonja edits and publishes the periodical Përpjekja (The Endeavour), which tackles sensitive issues such as Albanian nationalism, identity and myths, the growth of crony capitalism and the destruction of local architectural heritage.
Fatos Lubonja is awarded for his honest and lucid literary accounts of crucial episodes in Albania’s recent history; for maintaining his intellectual integrity and independence in extreme circumstances; for continuously fighting for democracy, human rights, free speech and the right to tell his country’s story in a context where that freedom remains fragile; for broadening the scope of public debate and providing platforms for other critical voices; and for fearlessly speaking truth to power.
14 окт 2024
