Mordechai Vanunu - Awards and Honours

Awards and Honours

Vanunu wrote the poem "I’m Your Spy" early during the first eleven and a half years he was held in strict isolation.

Amnesty International described his treatment as constituting "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment".

Vanunu received the Right Livelihood Award in 1987. He was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Tromsø in 2001.

In March 2009 Vanunu wrote to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in Oslo:

I am asking the committee to remove my name from the list for this year’s list of nominations. I cannot be part of a list of laureates that includes Shimon Peres, the President of Israel. He is the man who was behind all the Israeli atomic policy. Peres established and developed the atomic weapon program in Dimona in Israel..Peres was the man who ordered the kidnapping of me in Italy Rome, Sept. 30, 1986, and for the secret trial and sentencing of me as a spy and traitor for 18 years in isolation in prison in Israel. Until now he continues to oppose my freedom and release, in spite of my serving full sentence 18 years. From all these reasons I don’t want be nominated and will not accept this nomination. I say No to any nomination as long as I am not free, that is, as long as I am still forced to be in Israel. What I want is freedom and only freedom.

In September 2004, artist and musician Yoko Ono gave Mordechai Vanunu a peace prize founded in memory of John Lennon, her late husband.

In December 2004, he was elected by the students of the University of Glasgow to serve for three years as Rector. On 22 April 2005 he was formally installed in the post, but could not carry out any of its functions as he was still confined to Israel. The Herald newspaper launched a campaign for his release.

In 2005 he received the Peace Prize of the Norwegian People (Folkets fredspris). Previous recipients of this prize include Vytautas Landsbergis (1991), Alva Myrdal (1982), Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams.

On 24 February 2010, the Nobel Institute Director, Geir Lundestad, announced that for the second year in a row, Mordechai Vanunu had declined the honour of being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Vanunu wrote, "What I want now, I need now, is freedom, passport, awards."

On 21 September 2010, the Teach Peace Foundation recognized Mordechai Vanunu for his courageous actions to halt the development and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by the Israeli government.

On 4 October 2010, the International League for Human Rights announced that Vanunu was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal for 2010 and, on 16 November, sent open letters to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Interior Minister Eli Yishai, seeking Vanunu's free departure out of Israel to allow him to receive the medal at the Award Ceremony in Berlin on 12 December 2010. Nobel laureates cited as co-signatories to the letter include Mairead Maguire, Günter Grass, Harold W. Kroto and Jack Steinberger.

The request was refused and the 12 December Berlin medal ceremony was restyled as a protest event in support of Vanunu and nuclear disarmament. On this occasion a musical composition, The Dove, was dedicated to Vanunu and given its premier performance.