BERLIN Dec 17, 2005 — Muhammad Ali is being honored with a prestigious German peace prize for his work with in the civil rights movement and for the United Nations.
Ali, 63, is being awarded the Otto Hahn peace medal for his "lifelong engagement in the American civil rights movement and the global cultural emancipation of blacks, as well as his work as a U.N. Goodwill ambassador," the organization said.
At a news conference Friday, the former heavyweight boxing champ, who has Parkinson's disease, was helped on stage and sat next to his wife, Lonnie Ali, who said he was honored to be singled out as the first sportsman to receive the award.
"Muhammad, from the very beginning when he started boxing, he never let it define him as a person," she said. "Muhammad has used boxing as a vehicle to sort of promote his values and his ideals."
The award is presented every two years. Other recipients include former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal. It is named for the 1944 Nobel Prize winner Hahn, a German chemist and nuclear physicist who fled the Nazis in 1938. |