2021 Blueprint Whistleblowing prizes feature winners from four continents
2021 Blueprint Whistleblowing Prize ceremony was streamed live online on December 8, 2021. It honored ten brave winners from four continents.
Renowned for revealing the Pentagon Papers in 1971, Daniel Ellsberg received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Blueprint for Free Speech Whistleblowing Awards and called for a Presidential pardon for Daniel Hale, winner of the International Prize, and for jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Hale, a former Air Force intelligence analyst who helped find targets for deadly US drone strikes, is serving a 45-month sentence in a US Federal penitentiary in Illinois after being convicted for violating the controversial 1917 US Espionage Act.
He told a Federal judge he felt conscience-driven to leak information to a journalist over his participation in a program he believed was killing innocent civilians in Afghanistan, not the intended targets.
They were among 10 recipients of the awards presented Dec. 8 in a virtual ceremony hosted by the BBC's Razia Iqbal, honoring those speaking out about corruption, financial deceit, corporate espionage in the tobacco industry, and ethical wrongdoing at Google.
One of the award winners, Babita Deokaran, who was a key witness in an investigation into alleged corruption around the procurement of essential COVID Personal Protection Equipment in South Africa, was murdered.
Judging panel member and Executive Director of Blueprint for Free Speech Dr. Suelette Dreyfus said, “The range of whistleblowers who we are awarding this year demonstrate not only the bravery of those who speak out, but the widespread wrongdoing that continues to take place around the world.
“We are proud to showcase the men and women who have taken such huge risks and lost so much – including her life in the case of Babita Deokaran - by exposing wrongdoing and striving to make things better for us all,” she said.
The UK Prize was shared by Jonathan Taylor for exposing bribery at SBM Offshore, and Francois van der Westhuizen, Pieter Snyders and Paul Hopkins for blowing the whistle on British American Tobacco’s dirty tricks in Africa
Special Recognition Awards went to:
Tech industry whistleblower Margaret Mitchell
Pav Gill for his exposure of fraud at German financial firm Wirecard
Thabiso Zulu for his work on exposing municipal corruption in KwaZulu-Natal, and his disclosures about the murder of the ANC Youth League’s Secretary-General, Sindiso Magaqa
The awards recognize the bravery and integrity of whistleblowers who have made a positive impact in the public interest and spotlight those who have opposed corruption, political collusion, and professional misconduct.
Speaking to Iqbal, broadcast as part of Blueprint for Free Speech's annual Whistleblowing Awards ceremony, Ellsberg said there's been a spike in cases brought against whistleblowers by the US government.
He told how Nathan Hale – from whom Daniel Hale is descended - was the first American tried and hanged for giving secrets to the public. It was Ellsberg, more than 200 years later, who was the next prosecuted for whistleblowing.
In the 20 years that followed his case, there were only two other cases, one of which was dropped, before President Barack Obama took power and targeted whistleblowers, perpetuated by former President Donald Trump against Assange.
Ellsberg said: “President Obama, having come in promising a more open Government, actually brought more cases against whistleblowers than all previous Presidents put together.
PROSECUTING THE MESSENGERS
“He did that in two terms – Donald Trump prosecuted the same number in one term, and that included for the first time a journalist. If (Assange) is extradited, and prosecuted and convicted, he will not be the last journalist. It will be the end of the First Amendment essentially.”
“The Government lying is pretty much the same now as ever, I’m sorry to say. The prosecution of people to keep the secrecy is what has changed – especially since 9/11. They’ve taken on themselves excuse of prosecuting more whistleblowers and assassinating people by drones.”
Ellsberg said President Joe Biden, who opened a Summit for Democracy the same day of the awards, should pardon Hale, calling his fellow whistleblower “as great a patriot as his ancestor Nathan Hale.”
He said it was Hale who revealed to the public that drones aren't precision strikes killing enemies and terrorists, but the innocent, including children and journalists.
He said that drones “Don't kill as many innocent civilians and bystanders as they would with an even larger warhead, but this doesn’t make this murder of non-combatants any less murder.”
Hale, he said, “is revealing criminal behavior by our government, and it is absurd of course in any sense of the rule of law that you should be imprisoned for revealing criminality by your government or by anyone else."
Hale is not allowed to communicate from prison and it was left to a friend of his, Noor Mir, a member of his support campaign, to say that, "Daniel is very humbled and grateful to be receiving this award today.”
She added: “We hope that this award encourages other people who know the truth about crimes that are being committed by governments, about atrocities that are happening in the world, to tell the truth. Know that you are joining a community of other brave people that are really making a difference and inspiring future generations to do the same."
The whistleblowers have paid prices ranging from retaliation, intimidation, loss of jobs and family, being hounded by police and government agencies and businesses and even death.
Oil industry whistleblower Jonathan Taylor was trapped in Croatia for a year under threat of extradition to Monaco, abandoned by his own government in the United Kingdom. He blew the whistle on his former company's multimillion dollar bribery network spanning four continents
Snyders and van der Westhuizen are former policemen who worked for Forensic Security Services (FSS), the private security company hired by British American Tobacco (BAT) to manage its espionage operation in South Africa, which they revealed. A similar set of revelations from Paul Hopkins, a former BAT employee in Kenya, sparked off an investigation by the UK Serious Fraud Office (SFO)
Mitchell co-led a dedicated ethical AI research team at Google, and was fired after raising concerns about censorship within the company and campaigning for more diversity
Gill was an in-house lawyer at Wirecard, who tried to draw attention to suspected fraud reported by colleagues and worked with The Financial Times to report it despite constant harassment and fear of his life
Deokoran was murdered outside her home in what authorities believe was a targeted killing, silencing her from testifying against corrupt officials
Zulu is in hiding for his life after speaking out against large-scale corruption, the looting of municipal resources, poor service delivery for citizens, police brutality and politically-motivated killings of activists by politicians
Total prize money of £20,000 will be shared between the recipients of the prizes. This year’s winners were chosen by a panel of three judges: Lady Sue Woodford-Hollick OBE, award winning former investigative television journalist and current businesswoman; Dreyfus, an award-winning writer and academic, and James Catlin, a former finance journalist and now Australian barrister with particular expertise in fraud, media law, unfair trade practices and protected disclosures.
Blueprint for Free Speech
Blueprint for Free Speech is an internationally focused not-for-profit concentrating on research into and support of freedom of expression. Areas of research include public interest disclosure (whistleblowing), censorship, right to publish, media law, Internet freedom and freedom of information. Blueprint has significant expertise in whistleblowing legislation around the world.