Medford/Somerville, Massachusetts, June 2014 – In the wake of the Arab Spring and as nonviolent movements in Ukraine, Thailand, Brazil, and around the world capture the global public’s attention, on Wednesday, June 18th, two activists will be recognized for their courageous use of strategic nonviolent tactics to win human rights and justice, and two prominent scholars will be honored for their groundbreaking contributions to the field of civil resistance.
The James Lawson Awards are named after and presented in person by James Lawson, a leader in US Civil Rights movement who led the Nashville Lunch Counter sit-ins of 1960 and who Martin Luther King, Jr. called, “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.
Yorm Bopha, a 30-year old leader of a land rights movement in Cambodia who has boldly struggled alongside her community against forced evictions by the Cambodian government. As a result of her nonviolent activism, she was arrested on trumped up charges in September 2012 and became an Amnesty International Prisoner of Conscience while imprisoned for 444 days. In the face of government retribution, her commitment to nonviolent struggle has not wavered.
“These awardees show how ordinary people can fight oppression by organizing themselves and nonviolently mobilizing to win their rights,” said Hardy Merriman, Vice President of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, which organizes the Lawson Awards. “Each of them has taught others, put pressure on power-holders, and revealed that civil resistance is a potent force that will continue to shape humanity’s future.”