[Kabar-indonesia] Aceh peacemakers among Nobel prize favourites

[Joyo at aol.com]

also: Interview-Kidnap a constant fear for Russia Nobel hopeful

Aceh peacemakers among Nobel prize favourites

By John Acher

OSLO, October 9 (Reuters) - The parties to a year-old peace in
Indonesia's Aceh province and Finland's Martti Ahtisaari, who brokered
the deal, are among the favourites to win this year's Nobel Peace
Prize when it is announced on Friday.

However, past attempts by academics and bookies to guess the winner
have often been way off beam since no one outside the secretive
Norwegian Nobel Committee knows the list of nominees for the award,
set up by Swedish philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

This year's possible laureates include a Muslim woman defender of the
rights of China's Uighur minority, a Vietnamese monk under house
arrest, and Irish rockers Bob Geldof and Bono as long-shots.

But much speculation has focused on Aceh where peace has been in place
since August 2005 after a tsunami at the end of 2004 devastated the
province and led Jakarta and Aceh rebels to end a conflict in which
more than 15,000 people have died.

To reward and support that process, the prize could be shared between
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the rebel Free Aceh
Movement and possibly former Finnish president Ahtisaari who mediated
the deal, experts say.

Australian bookmakers Centrebet have tipped Ahtisaari and his Crisis
Management Initiative to win the 10 million Swedish crowns ($1.36
million) prize with 2-1 odds, followed by Yudhoyono at 4-1 and the
Free Aceh Movement at 5.5-1.

The Aceh deal signed in Helsinki stands out in a year when peace
efforts from the Middle East to Sri Lanka lie in tatters.

"The only really successful peace process in the past year has been
the Aceh process," said Stein Toennesson, head of the International
Peace Research Institute, Oslo.

"So it will be very difficult for the committee to ignore that and
give it to someone who wasn't involved," said Toennesson who lists
Ahtisaari as his top pick followed by Yudhoyono and China's Rebiya
Kadeer, a Muslim Uighur activist.

"LOTTERY TICKET"

Centrebet has Kadeer in fourth place on 13-1 and dissident Vietnamese
Buddhist monk Thich Quang Do, a campaigner for democracy and human
rights, in fifth at 15-1.

Asked in Helsinki on Monday about his chances, Ahtisaari said he knew
he was a nominee this year and added: "I have a feeling that when it
comes to the Nobel Peace Prize at least now I have got a ticket for
the lottery."

Toennesson said the committee could settle on Ahtisaari alone since it
may find it hard to choose a suitable representative of the Free Aceh
Movement (GAM) to share the prize with Yudhoyono.

Acehnese say that Yudhoyono's equal on the GAM side would be its
founder Tengku Hasan di Tiro who is ailing in exile. But Toennesseon
said he did not find him a likely prize-winner. "His main role has
been to keep up the armed struggle."

The committee might choose to reward Ahtisaari also for past peace
work -- from overseeing Namibia's transition to independence for the
United Nations in 1989-1990 to his role as the West's point man in the
Kosovo crisis in 1999.

Since November 2005 Ahtisaari has been the special envoy of the U.N.
Secretary-General on the future status of Kosovo.

"It seems that the Finnish gentleman has a lot of qualifications
through his public work, and certainly the committee has been thinking
about him, said Irwin Abrams, an American expert on the history of the
peace prize.

Last year's prize went to the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog and its Egyptian
head, Mohamed ElBaradei.

The previous year it went to Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai
and the 2003 award to Iranian human rights advocate Shirin Ebadi.
(Additional reporting by Sami Torma in Helsinki)

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Interview - Kidnap a constant fear for Russia Nobel hopeful

By James Kilner

MOSCOW, October 9 (Reuters) - The cramped apartment on the outskirts
of Moscow overlooking rows of Soviet-era tower blocks is the temporary
home of human rights lawyer Lydia Yusupova, a contender for the Nobel
Peace Prize.

It's temporary because next year she plans to return to her native
Grozny and continue -- despite the threat of murder and kidnap -- to
document human rights abuses in a war between Russia and Chechen
separatists which has killed thousands.

Australian bookmakers Centrebet put Yusupova, 46, among the top 10
favourites for the world's most prestigious peace prize.

Last year she won Norway's Rafto prize for human rights from which
four laureates have gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize since its
inauguration in 1987.

"It's very important (to win)," she said in the kitchen of her
two-room apartment where she has lived since last year while she
completes a study programme funded by the U.S. non-governmental
organisation Ford Foundation.

"The Chechnya theme is still critical. Things are not as good there as
European experts may think."

She was speaking one day before the murder of a prominent Russian
journalist who also documented human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Statesmen, politicians and international organisations dominate the
list of Nobel Peace Prize winners, although the committee of Norwegian
politicians and academics has recently favoured women grassroot
activists.

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights lawyer, won in 2003 and she was
followed by Kenyan green activist Wangari Maathai. Last year, on the
60th anniversary of the Hiroshima atom bomb attack, the committee
handed the award to the International Atomic Energy Agency and boss
Mohamed El Baradei.

This year's favourites for the prize, which will be announced on
Friday and is worth more than $1 million to the winner, include
Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari who helped negotiate peace in
Indonesia's Aceh province.

MURDER

Whether Yusupova wins or not, she says she will return to live and
work in Grozny, Chechnya's ruined capital.

"Now there is another wave (of kidnappings and arrests) in Chechnya,"
she said comparing it to disappearances during Stalin's Soviet Union.
"There are currently many people who are illegally imprisoned."

Two wars wrecked the southern Russian republic since 1994.

Thousands died and Yusupova and Memorial, the human rights group she
works for, estimate that as many as 5,000 people have disappeared --
mainly Chechens targeted by federal and pro-Russian law enforcement.

Yusupova, an ethnic Russian born in Grozny, also faced the threat of 
kidnapping.

"We went to bed every night waiting," she said, faint highlights
streaked through her short, dark hair. "I didn't want to be caught
totally off my guard if they came for me in the middle of the night."

The dangers for people who highlight the disappearances persist away
from Chechnya. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, one of President
Vladimir Putin's strongest critics, was killed by a gunman in central
Moscow on Saturday.

"It's absolutely terrible," Yusupova said by telephone after the
murder. "It was done to make others shut their mouths. To say 'See
what can happen to you'."

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Joyo Indonesia News Service
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