Notre Dame Prize bestowed to human rights activist, Helen Mack
Terra/EFE
September 20, 2005
The Guatemalan human rights activist, Helen Mack, received the 2005 Notre Dame Prize for
Distinguished Public Service in Latin America by the University of Notre Dame.
The ceremony took place at the local museum of the University of San Carlos, in the historic downtown of the capital city. Rev. James McDonald, general secretary and adviser to the University of Notre Dame Presidency handed the award over to Mack.
“Due to her contribution to the debate of issues such as impunity, justice, human rights and security, Helen Mack has become a cited reference at the national and international level,” said McDonald.
The Prize, bestowed as well by the Kellogg Institute for International Studies and the Coca Cola Foundation, includes a ten thousand dollars cash award for the recipient and the same amount in a form of a donation to a Latin American Non Profit Organization. By Mack’s decision, the money will be given this year to the Myrna Mack Foundation, institution that bears the name of the activist sister assassinated at the hands of the security forces on September 1990.
Since 1999, the University of Notre Dame grants the Prize for Distinguished Public Service in Latin America. The Peruvian, Sofia Macher, former and current Brazilian Presidents, Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva and the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Enrique Iglesias, were recipients this award.
Helen Mack, a former business manager transformed into a human rights activist, began her struggle to combat injustice and impunity in Guatemala after the murder of her sister. As a result of Myrna’s Mack academic work in favor of thousands of displaced groups and victims of the internal war, a special command of the Presidency ordered her execution.
After fourteen years of intense judicial battles, the Court sentenced former Army Sergeant, Noel de Jesus Beteta to 25 years in prison and to 30 years in prison to former Army Chief, Juan Valencia Osorio, the latter still fugitive of justice.
“I consider myself a circumstantial recipient of this award, because if we talk about distinguished public service, there are thousands of Guatemalan women and men which devoted their lives to the same cause, but as a result of the character of their work, they remain in the anonymity”, said Mack.
In 1992 Helen Mack received the Right Livelihood Award, considered by many as the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize.
