The ruling on Friday came after days of growing international pressure to allow Ms. Ressa to attend the ceremony, which will be held in Oslo on Dec. 10.
Earlier this week, the United Nations urged the Philippines to let Ms. Ressa travel to Norway, saying it was “very concerned” about the restrictions placed on her. The International Press Institute warned that blocking Ms. Ressa from the ceremony “puts the Philippines in the company of some of history’s most repressive regimes.”
The last time a government barred a Nobel Laureate from collecting an award was in 2010, when China prevented the dissident Liu Xiaobo from doing so. The only other time that an award was not collected was in 1936, when the peace prize went to Carl von Ossietzky, a German journalist detained in a concentration camp by Nazi Germany.
The Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, the leader of Poland’s Solidarity movement, Lech Walesa and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar were also barred by their governments from attending, but their family members were allowed to collect the award on their behalf.
“We’d like to think that the Court of Appeals reached the resolution independently of any public opinion,” said Mr. Te, Ms. Ressa’s lawyer. “But the Court of Appeals is composed of human beings who are aware of what’s going on. So, of course, anything they read could possibly have an influence on how they think.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/world/asia/maria-ressa-nobel-peace-prize.html
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