"Women and girls are too often the abused and psychologically damaged victims of war.  It is good that there is an organisation like RAW dedicated to supporting such victims and to enabling them to share their nightmare experiences and to assist each other.  Our thanks and appreciation go to Mariana Katzarova and RAW both for having established this prize in memory of Anna Politkovskaya and for having organised this occasion at which the prize is to be awarded for the first time.

I am sorry - and frustrated - not to be able to be with you all today.

I very much look forward to chairing the meeting for Natasha at the House of Lords on Monday.  Meanwhile, I send my warmest congratulations to Natasha and, through her, to Memorial as a whole, for their steadfast and courageous commitment to integrity and truth whatever the adverse pressures and the sometimes acute dangers.  Their work has been in the finest traditions of Anna who remains a shining example of journalism at its very best: a refusal ever to yield or compromise and an irrepressible determination to describe honestly whatever she saw, not least the cruelties and injustices on all sides. Even more important was her honest endeavour to reveal the manipulators and real power players behind it all.  And she did this in the full knowledge of the potentially grim consequences which predictably and sadly materialised. Anna, Natasha and Memorial present a challenge to everything at the heart of what we like to claim as central to our own freedom and democracy.  We shall only begin to honour these heroes if we all rededicate ourselves tirelessly to protecting those essential values."
 

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