NEW YORK (May 1, 2025) — The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2025 Václav Havel International Prize for Creative Dissent: Cuban artist and pro-democracy activist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, Syrian activist and artist Azza Abo Rebieh, and Russian artist, poet, and musician Sasha Skochilenko.
“To imagine is to challenge what is, and envision what could be,” HRF CEO Thor Halvorssen said. “The Havel Prize recognizes individuals who embody this transformative power of imagination in the service of truth-telling in the face of oppression.”
This year’s laureates will be recognized during a ceremony at the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum in Oslo, Norway. The prize will be presented to the recipients by Irina Schoulgin-Nyoni, Sweden’s ambassador for human rights, democracy and the rule of law.
The Havel Prize ceremony will also be broadcast live at oslofreedomforum.com on May 26. For broadcast time, please check oslofreedomforum.com and follow @OsloFFon X and other social media.
LUIS MANUEL OTERO ALCÁNTARA
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is a Cuban artist, activist, and political prisoner. He is the founder of the San Isidro Movement, a collective of artists and dissidents that emerged in 2018 to challenge censorship and demand greater freedoms in Cuba.
He gained international attention for his performance art and peaceful protests, including hunger strikes and symbolic acts of resistance. He was arrested during Cuba’s historic 2021 protests and sentenced to five years in prison following a closed trial. In 2022, following a submission by HRF, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared his imprisonment to be arbitrary and urged the Cuban regime to release him immediately. He is being held in Guanajay maximum-security prison.
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, “Los Heroes no Pesan.” Courtesy of the artist.
AZZA ABO REBIEH
Azza Abo Rebieh is a Syrian artist born in Hama in 1980. During the Syrian revolution, she created graffiti, led workshops with women, and organized puppet theater for children in rural villages. In 2015, she was detained by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.
Art became her solace during her imprisonment in Adra prison, where she shared a cell with 30 women, many of whom were illiterate. Azza drew her cellmates, dignifying them through reminders and glimpses of themselves through sketches. Following her release, her prison drawings were exhibited at the Drawing Center in New York. Her work explores memory, resistance, and survival and is held in collections including the British Museum and Institut du Monde Arabe.
Azza Abo Rebieh, “Hindmosts.” Courtesy of the artist.
SASHA SKOCHILENKO
Sasha Skochilenko is a Russian artist, musician, poet, and former political prisoner. She was arrested in 2022 for distributing anti-war messages and sentenced in 2023 to seven years in prison under Russia’s so-called “fake news” law.
Skochilenko was released in 2024 as part of the Ankara prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia. She lives in Germany, where she continues her artistic work, participating in exhibitions in Paris, Amsterdam, and London to showcase the drawings she created in prison. Beyond activism, she’s the author of “Book About Depression,” which played a significant role in destigmatizing mental health issues in Russia.
Sasha Skochilenko replaced pricing labels with anti-war messages (seen here in English translation).
The Havel Prize is named after the late Czech president, poet, playwright, dissident, statesman, and former HRF chairman, Václav Havel. Havel led the nonviolent revolution that freed Czechoslovakia from Communist rule, creatively challenging arbitrary power and injustice in his country.
HRF launched the Havel Prize in 2012 with the support of Dagmar Havlová, Havel’s widow. Laureates receive a bronze sculpture depicting the “Goddess of Democracy,” the iconic figure erected by Chinese students during the Tiananmen Square protests in June 1989.
Previous laureates include Iranian rapper hip-hop artist Toomaj Salehi, Uyghur poet, filmmaker and activist Tahir Hamut Izgil, Grammy Award-winning Venezuelan pianist and recording artist Gabriela Montero, performance project Stand Up for Ukraine, Nicaraguan political cartoonist Pedro X. Molina, prominent Ugandan novelist Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, Iranian artist project PaykanArtCar, late Rwandan gospel musician and activist Kizito Mihigo, Saudi women’s rights activist Manal al-Sharif, Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, South Sudanese activist and musician Emmanuel Jal, the Belarus Free Theatre, Cuban civil society group the Ladies in White, and Thai band Rap Against Dictatorship.
Find regular updates about the 2025 Oslo Freedom Forum at oslofreedomforum.com and on social media.
If you are interested in sponsoring the Oslo Freedom Forum, please contact [email protected]. If you are interested in attending as a member of the media, please contact [email protected].
If you are interested in bringing your family to the OFF Camp for Kids, please contact [email protected]. OFF Camp for Kids is an interdisciplinary human rights
camp that includes fun activities, sports, and educational programming around the city of Oslo.
