Other events in Baltic States

LGBT rights activist and leader of the Dzivesbiedri (Spouses) movement Kaspars Zalitis has won the Greste Baltic Freedom of Speech Award, Vita Dreijere, an expert with the Media Studies Center at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga) and  a representative of the award's jury, informed LETA. 

She revealed that the other candidate from Latvia nominated for the freedom of speech prize was pastor and prison chaplain.

Dreijere said that that the nominations for the prize were chosen by a jury led by renowned Australian journalist of Latvian descent Peter Greste. She noted that this year, the jury had to choose from the winners among strong candidates but that they were thankful that the award could be conferred to a man who for many years has "actively tried to provide that the freedom of speech is not a privilege of the strongest and loudest but an absolute necessity for all groups of society".

The Greste Award was also presented to several journalists and journalistic projects in Estonia and Lithuania.

The Chairman of the jury Peter Greste, is an Australian journalist who while working for Al Jazeera, was accused of supporting a terrorist organization and spent 400 days in a Cairo prison. Professor Greste has Latvian roots and actively supports freedom of speech in the region.