Jailed Belarus, Georgia Journalists Win EU's Top Rights Prize

The EU's Sakharov Prize, set up in 1988, is named after Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov (Credit: AFP)

The EU parliament awarded the bloc's Sakharov human rights prize on Wednesday to jailed Georgian journalist and editor Mzia Amaghlobeli and Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, calling them symbols of the "struggle for freedom".

Amaghlobeli, 50, has emerged as a symbol of journalistic defiance to what the European Union says is a slide toward authoritarianism in her Caucasian nation -- once a top candidate for the bloc's membership.