 Nobel
Peace laureates to receive award in person despite high COVID-19 rates
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[December 10, 2021]
OSLO (Reuters) - Nobel Peace Prize
laureates Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, recognised for their fight for
freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia, will receive their
awards at a ceremony in Oslo on Friday, despite Norway's high rate of
COVID-19.
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 The journalists won the award at a time when free, independent and
fact-based journalism is under fire, the Norwegian Nobel Committee
said when announcing the peace prize in October.
The ceremony at Oslo City Hall will go ahead, but will have fewer
guests than planned due to government restrictions put in place this
week. Norway reported record daily COVID-19 infections on Thursday.
In Sweden, where infection rates are lower than in Norway,
organisers in September cancelled the in-person Nobel ceremonies for
the second year running.
Instead, the 2021 laureates in Medicine, Physics, Chemistry,
Literature and Economics, prizes all awarded in Sweden, received
their diplomas and medals in their home countries, while the
traditional Nobel lectures have all been given online.
Introducing the streamed Literature lecture by winner Abdulrazak
Gurnah, Mats Malm, Permanent Secretary of the academy that awards
the prize, noted how distance was a part of this year's prize-giving
as well as a key element in the work of the author, who won for
stories about colonialism and the fate of refugees in the gulf
between cultures and continents.
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 "At this Nobel lecture, this
issue of distance is particularly apparent,"
Malm said. "Our author has been recorded in
England. This is a distance we will be able to
bridge at a future point in time."
Ressa and Muratov are the first journalists to
receive the prize since Germany's Carl von
Ossietzky won the 1935 award for revealing his
country's secret post-war rearmament programme.
For a graphic listing all Nobel laureates, click
on https://graphics.reuters.com/NOBEL-PRIZE/010050ZC27H/index.html
(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo, Simon
Johnson and Johan Ahlander in Stockholm)
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