The Norwegian Committee distinguishes the Russian NGO Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine have been recognized with the award
The Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian NGO Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine have been recognized with the Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Committee has valued the three winners, whom it has defined as “champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence”, while highlighting the “remarkable efforts” they have made to defend “the values rights and the rule of law”, as well as anti-militarism.
Bialiatski, a lawyer, began his activism in the 1980s and founded the Viasna organization in 1996 as a counterweight to the “dictatorial” tendencies of the Alexander Lukashenko regime. He spent three years in jail, between 2011 and 2014, and was arrested again after the 2020 post-election protests. He is still in preventive detention accused of tax evasion, making him the fourth person to be awarded the Nobel Prize while in prison, along with the Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, the Chinese Liu Xiaobo and the German Carl von Ossietzky.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee called for his release. “Our message is to urge the Belarusian authorities to release Bialiatski and we hope that this will happen and that he can come to Oslo and receive the prize,” said Nobel committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen. “But there are thousands of political prisoners in Belarus and I am afraid that my wish may not be very realistic,” she added.
Likewise, the Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tijanovskaya, President Alexander Lukashenko’s main rival in the 2020 elections, congratulated the activist Ales Bialiatski and took the opportunity to demand the release of “all political prisoners.” “The award is an important recognition to all the Belarusians who fight for freedom and democracy,” Tijanovskaya stressed on Twitter, who left her country for fear of being arrested after the mobilizations unleashed as a result of the last elections.
Andrei Sakharov
In Russia, the Norwegian Committee has focused on the NGO Memorial, founded in 1987, in the midst of Soviet decline, by activists such as Andrei Sakharov, who had previously been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The organization continued to grow after the collapse of the USSR and its constant conflict with the Kremlin led to its being declared a “foreign agent” and forced to close at the end of 2021. “Civil society actors in Russia have been victims of threats, arrests, disappearances and murders for many years, ”read the jury’s conclusions.
For its part, the Center for Civil Liberties emerged in 2007 to promote democracy and the defense of human rights in Ukraine and, in recent months, has worked to identify and document the alleged war crimes perpetrated by Russia. It had already advocated since its foundation for Ukraine’s incorporation into the International Criminal Court (ICC), for the sake of accountability.
The activist and the two human rights organizations take up the witness of the journalists Maria Ressa and Dimitri Muratov, awarded in the 2021 edition, and will receive a recognition in December in Oslo that also entails the delivery of 10 million Swedish crowns (more of 917,000 euros).
The Nobel committee wanted to make it clear that its decision to award human rights activists from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia was not directed against Russian President Vladimir Putin, but urged him to stop repressing militants. “We have not thought about him, neither for his birthday nor in any other sense, except for the fact that his government, like that of Belarus, represents an authoritarianism that represses human rights activists,” he declared. Berit Reiss-Andersen.
“Extraordinary Courage”
For her part, the president of the European Commission (EU), Ursula von der Leyen, recognized the “extraordinary courage” of those who confront autocracies. The winners “show the true power of civil society in the fight for democracy,” she noted on Twitter.
For this year’s edition, 342 applications had been submitted, of which 251 correspond to individuals and 92 to organizations. The list, which closed at the end of January, is the second largest in the history of the awards, behind only the record 376 reached in 2016. Other nominees included the Arctic Council, the Burmese civil disobedience movement and the Honduran scientist María Elena Bottazzi for the Corbevax vaccine against Covid-19.
The award ceremony will be held on December 10, the anniversary of the death of its founder, Alfred Nobel, at the Oslo City Hall. It is endowed with 10 million Swedish crowns (about 984,000 euros).
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