He receives us with a big smile on his face, behind his desk, as usual in the middle of work. If you want to talk to Nuri Kino you frequently have to wait until he finishes a phone conversation or an email, and this rule also applies when you come with flowers and a diploma from a newspaper office.
-This is ours, Nuri Kino says straight away, holding up the proof that he is role model of the year, in order to include the whole organization, A Demand for Action.
He is the founder of this non-profit organization, working all hours of day and night, since it operates all the way from Sydney till Washington. But headquarters is in Södertälje, Sweden, where Nuri Kino is holding the global network together. He says that he is spending many hours each day, seven days a week, on this work, and that he more or less was forced into it.
-We didn’t have a choice, the work chose us, he says.
-Last fall I realized that I had to take a sabbatical from everything else and just work with this.
When asked how he makes a living, the answer is rather pompous, at first.
-Fighting spirit and combativeness, and that I can see our work is bearing fruit.
Well, you can’t fill a hungry belly with combativeness, so a few paid writing assignments and savings tide him over. And off camera he confesses that he had to move back in with his mother.
The award-winning investigative journalist has had to make quite a few changes in his life, in order to dedicate himself entirely to those in distress. It’s about everything from giving away his own shoes to a pregnant Muslim woman fleeing from Syria, to lobbying at the highest political level in the U.S. and EU for the recognition that Daesh is committing genocide against Christian Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans. It’s about getting food on the table for those who have escaped death, to lobbying for autonomy for the minorities in Iraq, so that they’ll be able to return and feel secure in their homeland.
Action is exactly what Nuri Kino demands. That the world is not going to watch passively while his own people, the Assyrians/Syriacs/Chaldeans, are expelled from their historic homeland. That the world is going to put an end to the killing of dissidents by Daesh, regardless of their ethnicity or creed.
Today, when the newspaper Dagen presents him as Role Model of the Year, Nuri Kino is already on his way to the U.S. Information has come to hand that the Obama administration could be on the verge of recognizing that Daesh has committed genocide against the ethno-religious group the Yazidis.
-This is fine but not enough, according to Nuri Kino.
That is why he is travelling to Washington in order to make the U.S. also recognize the ongoing genocide against the Christian minorities. He hopes that the EU shortly will make the same decision. A recognition, not only involving words, but also political action; a demand for action!
Facts:
Where does the prize money go?
With the Role Model of the Year, there is also a sum of 10 000 SEK, to be used for a deserving purpose. There are many deserving purposes. When asked, Nuri Kino mentions two alternatives for using the money. Either a campaign in Beirut, for Christmas gifts for refugee children. Or to pay rents in Istanbul, for apartments that the activists are renting to shelter refugees.
The motivation of the Jury:
At a time when the Middle East has almost been emptied of its Christian population, the journalist Nuri Kino has taken on the task to inform and make the world aware of this exodus. He is fighting for persecuted Christians and other minorities, and has jointly founded the non-profit organization A Demand For Action in order to rouse public opinion. A work that, with Södertälje as its base, involves down-to-earth everyday struggle, but above all travelling and lecturing to raise the issue, which he has been doing even in the White House.
