US Embassy to the Czech Republic gives its Alice Garrigue Masaryk Human Rights Award to the director of the Association for Integration and Migration, Magda Faltová
The Alice Garrigue Masaryk Human Rights Award from the Embassy of the United States of America to the Czech Republic has been given to the director of the Association for Integration and Migration NGO (Sdružení pro integraci a migraci- SIMI), Magda Faltová. American chargé d'affaires Christy Agor expressed appreciation for Faltová's assiduous defense of the rights of asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees and for her work to combat discrimination in Czech society.
Faltová has been leading SIMI since 2009. “She was a leading figure during the crisis of migration in 2015, in 2021 she aided people leaving Afghanistan, and this year she has assisted the refugees from Ukraine who have been driven from their homes by Russia’s brutal war. In addition, Faltová defends the rights of women, foreign nationals and persons in detention. She has been working in the field of human rights for more than 17 years,” the embassy said in a statement.
Agor expressed this appreciation for Faltová on the basis of recommendations by the US Embassy’s Human Rights Committee “for her tireless, persistent and principled support for combating discrimination and for defending the rights of asylum-seekers, migrants and refugees in the Czech Republic.” The embassy has annually bestowed the Alice Garrigue Masaryk Human Rights Award since 2004 as an expression of its recognition to individuals or organizations whose contributions to developing human rights in the Czech Republic deserve exceptional recognition.
The award is named after one of the daughters of the first president of an independent Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, and his American wife, Charlotte Garrigue Masaryk; Alice Garrigue Masaryk headed the Czechoslovak Red Cross organization beginning in 1919. The award is meant to recall Alice’s efforts to achieve social justice and her personal bravery in defending human rights.
In recent years the embassy has given the award to the former Public Defender of Rights, Anna Šabatová; to the LGBT+ rights activist Czeslaw Walek; to the head of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust, Mr. Čeněk Růžička, who has since passed away; to the ROMEA organization; to the weekly RESPEKT; and to the head of the People in Need organization, Šimon Pánek. Last year activists Gwendolyn Albert, Elena Gorolová, and then-Deputy Public Defender of Rights Monika Šimůnková were given the award for their efforts to compensate the victims of illegal sterilizations in the former Czechoslovakia and present-day Czech Republic.
During yesterday’s award ceremony, Agor recalled the 2017 awardee who passed away just a few days ago, Mr. Čeněk Růžička. That activist and co-founder of the Committee for the Redress of the Roma Holocaust was honored above all for his fight to build a dignified memorial at the site of the WWII-era concentration camp for Roma at Lety u Písku, a site that had been partially covered over by an industrial pig farm for 13,000 animals since the 1970s.
