After receiving a marriage proposal and asylum offers from three Latin American countries, Snowden is now in line for a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, Huffington Post reported early Wednesday.
A Swedish professor Stefan Svallfors has made the nomination. In a letter to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Svallfors said Snowden deserved the prize because of his “heroic effort at great personal cost,” Huffington Post’s website read.
Svallfors also said Snowden was a true example of how individuals can “stand up for fundamental rights and freedoms.”
“This example is important because since the Nuremberg trials in 1945 has been clear that the slogan ‘I was just following orders’ is never claimed as an excuse for acts contrary to human rights and freedoms,”RT news quoted Svallfors as saying in the letter.
The news websites also said the Swedish professor maintained that awarding Snowden with the Nobel Peace Prize would help save the committee from the “disrepute” it received after awarding US President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.
However, Kristian Berg Harpviken, senior researcher and deputy director at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo, told Interfax news agency that is unlikely Snowden will become a Nobel Prize laureate. The major deadlines have passed and Snowden thus has very little time to make it to the shortlist, RT news wrote.
The chances of Snowden winning the prize are indeedquite low since the fugitive is being chased by the US for almost a month. The head of the International Committee of the Russian State Duma Aleksey Pushkov argued that the US won’t let Nobel Peace Prize go to Snowden.
“Not in a million years will the United States allow Snowden to get the Peace Prize. But his nomination is significant. Many in the West see him as a champion of democracy,” he tweeted on Monday.
WikiLeaks, in a tweet, said the prize is “corrupt” and an “instrument of foreign policy,” used by Norwegian and Swedish establishments, a claim many would agree with especially since the committee’s rather controversial move of awarding the prize to Obama in 2009 which drew widespread criticism from around the world.
