South African Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel of Argentina wrote an open letter criticizing the Nobel Commite’s decision, while the award ceremony approaches.
– “The EU is obviously not the champion of peace that Alfred Nobel referred in his will,” write the Nobel laureates in their open letter.
The three received the Nobel Peace Prize respectively in 1984, 1976 and 1980. In the letter, they argue that the Nobel Committee has made an illegal redefinition of the Peace Prize and ask that the Nobel Committee must respect the original will of Alfred Nobel.
They also ask that the monetary prize (6.8 million NOK) should not be paid to the EU.
A total of 18 European leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Franois Hollande, confirmed their attendance to the peace prize ceremony in Oslo on 10 December. The British Prime Minister David Cameron and Sweden’s Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, on the other hand, have declined the invitation, according to news agency AFP.
