Pole's peace march nominated for Nobel prize
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
20.06.2018 08:20
The Civil March For Aleppo has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, according to the Facebook profile of the campaign, which was set up by Polish blogger Anna Alboth.
Displaced Syrian refugees inside a makeshift shelter at a refugee camp in Lebanon. Photo: EPA/Nabil Mounzer.
Alboth, who lives in Berlin, rallied together more than 3,000 people from 62 countries for the peaceful protest against the war in Syria.
They headed for the Aleppo with the hope of drawing international attention to the humanitarian crisis facing the city.
The marchers reached Lebanon nine months after setting out from Berlin on Boxing Day 2016 on the reversed 4,000-kilometre-long “refugee route”.
The route has been traversed by hundreds of thousands of Syrian asylum seekers hoping to reach Europe via Turkey.
Organisers of the Civil March For Aleppo expressed gratitude for the nomination, and also thanked people in the 12 countries crossed by marchers who helped provide food, shelter and other support.
But they also said: “Despite what some media outlets or some politicians try to say: the war in Syria is not over... Thousands of people cannot come back to their homes and remain displaced within Syria and outside its borders. On a continuing basis, every day, today people hide from shelling and bombardment, get injured, starve and die”.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 21,500 civilians have died in Aleppo since 2011, and hundreds of thousands have fled, as supporters of Bashar al-Assad's government, rebel forces, and Kurds, fought for control of the city.
Nobel prize winners are to be announced on December 10.
Meanwhile, the United Nations marks World Refugee Day on June 20. (vb/pk)
Source: PAP