Lifetime Award of the Prix Courage 2022 goes to Anni Lanz

The 2022 Lifetime Award for special service to the community goes to the Human rights activist Anni Lanz. For almost 40 years, she has been for people on the run. For their tireless commitment to humanity, justice and solidarity, the editors of the Observer Anni Lanz with the Prix Courage Lifetime Award 2022.

Anni Lanz began helping refugees at the age of 40. Over the last four decades, she has housed more than 100 people in her three-room apartment in Basel - Kurds and Tamils in the 1980s, Bosnians, Serbs and Kosovo Albanians in the 1990s, Afghans and Syrians at the beginning of the new millennium, and now Ukrainians.

In doing so, Anni Lanz stood up for the refugees in the most diverse ways: she hid rejected people, accompanied and encouraged them, visited them in prison again and again, wrote appeals and fought political battles. That is why the Law Faculty of the University of Basel awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2004, why she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 as one of five Swiss women in the "1000 Peace Women" project, why she received the Fischhof Prize in 2007 from the Foundation against Racism and Anti-Semitism and the Minorities in Switzerland Society. And that is why the editors of the Observer are now presenting Anni Lanz with the 2022 Lifetime Award of the Prix Courage.

"As a young girl, I was always looking for the meaning of life," says Anni Lanz. "Then I realized that when I do something for others, it gives me meaning in life."

Five run for the top prize

Who wins the main prize of 15,000 Swiss francs will be decided in equal parts by the readers and the jury headed by former Aargau cantonal councilor Susanne Hochuli. These are the candidates:

• Aileen Lakatos fights against sexual assault in film and theater. As a young high school student, Aileen Lakatos participated in her first film casting and was sexually harassed. During her monologue, a man approached from behind, touched her shoulders, fondled her breasts and grabbed her crotch. Later it turned out that it was not a real casting, but the shooting for a film that was supposed to show what young actresses would allegedly do for a film role. Lakatos was thus presented with false facts that were used as justification for sexual assault. She sought out other victims and initiated legal action with them in 2018. In April 2022, the Brugg District Court held in a legally binding settlement that the director must pay damages.

• Meinrad Furrer stands up for a church that does not discriminate against anyone. He blessed homosexual couples against the will of the Catholic Church. In March 2021, the Vatican gave instructions to all representatives of the Catholic Church that blessings of homosexuals were forbidden. The rejection of the "blessing for all" awakened Meinrad Furrer's fighting spirit. He felt that a signal was now needed. The pastor has always been an advocate for a diverse church and has blessed same-sex couples in private before. Because of the directive from the Vatican, he decided to do so publicly - in defiance of the ban from Rome. He invited "all those who love each other" to be blessed by him on the Platzspitz in Zurich. Ten same-sex couples benefited from his offer.

• Natallia Hersche went to prison for 17 months for democracy in Belarus. The Swiss-Belarusian dual citizen took part in a march against electoral fraud by the ruler Alexander Lukashenko during a visit to her original homeland in the fall of 2020. In the process, she was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. During pre-trial detention, the political prisoner was tortured with sleep deprivation, and in the prison colony where Hershe was taken after the verdict, she was put in solitary confinement - due to her refusal to sew uniforms - for 40 days in an unheated, small cell. The democracy activist could have asked for a pardon to shorten her sentence. She decided against it because she had done nothing wrong and, thanks to Swiss diplomacy, was released only after 17 months.

• Gabriella Hagger became the victim of a conspiracy theory and was subsequently labeled a Satanist. She is now fighting to ensure that others do not suffer the same fate. Gabriella Hagger's husband was accused by his daughter of ritual child abuse. In a therapy the alleged memories of satanic rituals had arisen in the psychologically burdened young woman. Although a court exonerated the parents, they are still met with mistrust today. This circumstance weighed heavily on Hagger and she began to research the subject. In the process, she came across the "Satanic Panic" conspiracy story, experts who believe that Satanists abuse children and wantonly split their victims' psyches. In her calm, persistent manner, Gabriella Hagger clarifies the dangerous ideology. She advises relatives, talks to media professionals and authorities, and thus ensures that the topic is now discussed socially and scientifically.
• Daniel Juzi evacuated 21 members of a flying relief organization from Afghanistan. He lived with his family in Afghanistan for 17 years and speaks the local language. As a pilot for the aid organization Pactec, he flew countless missions in the country. Luzi describes Pactec as a kind of air cab for humanitarian missions, flying where others would not dare. Even after returning to Switzerland, he stayed connected to Afghanistan, occasionally flying more missions for the aid agency in the country. When the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021, he organized the evacuation of the 21 aid workers from Switzerland. He spent three days negotiating with the Taliban.

Which of the five nominees will win this year's main prize, worth 15,000 Swiss francs, will be decided in equal parts by the.., public voting as well as by the jury headed by former Aargau cantonal councilor Susanne Hochuli. The award ceremony will take place on Friday evening, October 28, 2022.