English
New Delhi: The ‘Black Lives Matter’ Movement, that became an international slogan last year after the killing of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize for promoting “peaceful civil disobedience against police brutality and racial violence” by calling for a systematic change across the world.
Norwegian MP Petter Eide, who put out the nomination papers for the foundation, said that the movement not only raised alarm against the Black Lives but also forced other countries to grapple with racism within their own societies.
“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality. Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice,” Eide noted.
“They (the organisers) have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice,” he said.
Notably, about 20 million people have taken part in the Black Lives Matter Movement in the US itself, joined by millions more across other countries in the world. Statistics show that 93 per cent of the protests involved “no serious harm” to people or property.
The 61-year-old politician, who has represented the Socialist Left party in the US Parliament since 2017, has previously nominated human rights activists from Russia and China for the Nobel peace prize. However, he pointed out that what impressed him about the Black Lives Matter movement was the way the foundation has “been able to mobilise people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors.”
“Awarding the peace prize to Black Lives Matter, as the strongest global force against racial injustice, will send a powerful message that peace is founded on equality, solidarity and human rights and that all countries must respect those basic principles,” Eide said as he concluded his paper.
Founded in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, the Black Lives Matter movement started as a response after the Court acquitted the man who shot Trayvon Martin. It gained recognition in 2014 in the African-Ameican minority following the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, among several other high-profile cases of police brutality against the community.
However, the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum globally in 2020 after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, caught on camera, spurred massive protests and calls for police reform.
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