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The following article is featured in the current edition of our newsletter, "First Freedom News".
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(Left to right):
Rev. Brent Walker, Virgina First Freedom Award Winner;
Sulema Jahangir, accepting the award for her mother, Asma Jahangir, the International First Freedom Award Winner;
Rena Berlin, accepting the First Freedom Distinguished Service Award for the Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute of the Virginia Holocaust Museum;
Dr. John Graz, the National First Freedom Award Winner
At its January 13 First Freedom Awards dinner, the Center conveyed four honors. It conferred its International Religious Freedom Award on former United Nations Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Religion or Belief, Asma Jahangir. The Center cited her for her tireless advocacy both in her native Pakistan and worldwide of human rights and religious freedom. Because of events in Pakistan, Ms. Jahangir was unable to complete her planned visit to Richmond, and her daughter, human rights attorney Sulema Jahangir, accepted the award in her stead. The National First Freedom Award went to Secretary General of the International Religious Liberty Association, John Graz, whose lifelong support for religious freedom, both as an advocate and as a scholar/writer, has achieved worldwide acclaim. Virginia First Freedom Award recipient, J. Brent Walker, achieved recognition for his unstinting legal and political advocacy for constitutionality in the relations between church and state. The Center presented its Distinguished Service Award to the Alexander Lebenstein Teacher Education Institute at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. The Museum's Director of Education, Rena Berlin, accepted the award, which recognized the Institute's widespread and broadly acclaimed work to enable Virginia teachers to explain the Holocaust and its relationship to modern genocide. In their remarks, recipients stressed the urgency of the work in which they themselves and the Center engage during a time when the abuse of internationally recognized rights of freedom and religion and conscience is so closely associated with conflict and violence.


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