Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has been awarded the Fritz Bauer Prize of the German Humanist Union, a prominent civil rights organization, for exposing the controversial surveillance practices of the NSA and its accomplices.
“Edward Snowden showed exceptional moral courage in exposing illegal surveillance practices,” the national chairman Werner Koep-Kerstin said on Saturday in Rastatt.
With his leaks about NSA activities, Koep-Kerstin claims, Snowden had “initiated a long overdue debate on the limits of the security mania, democratic demands on the control of intelligence as well as international rules of surveillance,” Märkische online Zeitungmeans quotes.
The Fritz Bauer Prize was established in 1968 in memory of its founder, Fritz Bauer, the longtime Attorney General of Hesse, who pioneered a legal fight against Nazi injustice. The Humanist Union presents the award to those who have excelled in contributions to the humanization, liberalization and democratization of the judiciary.
Last summer, Snowden had already secured the recognition of the German advocates, receiving the 2013 Whistleblower Award. And in October, a group of US whistleblowers presented Snowden with the Sam Adams Award for ‘Integrity in Intelligence’ during a secret meetingin Moscow.