Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski – Ansa
The Belarusian activist was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize Ales Bialiatski and to two organizations fighting for human rights: in particular, the Russian human rights organization monument and the Ukrainian Human Rights Association Center for Civil Liberties. The committee announced the Nobel Prize in Oslo in honor of “commitment to defending human rights and the right to criticize power, defending civil rights for citizens’ rights and against abuse of power, documenting war crimes”.
The 2022 Nobel Prize award ceremony to Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian democratic activists will take place on the day Putin celebrates his 70th birthday. “This award is not directed at President Putin … except that his government represents an authoritarian government that cracks down on human rights defenders,” said the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee chairman. The justification, communicated during a press conference in the Norwegian capital Oslo, emphasizes that the winners represent civil society in their countries and have been committed to defending people’s fundamental rights for years. The award, stressed the chairman of the Nobel jury, Berit Reiss-Andersen, is a recognition of efforts to document war crimes and abuse of power.
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Ales Bialiatski He was one of the initiators of the democratic movement that emerged in Belarus in the mid-1980s. He has dedicated his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his country of origin. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee communiqué reports how “the government authorities repeatedly tried to silence him”: “He was imprisoned from 2011 to 2014. After large-scale demonstrations against the regime in 2020, he was arrested again imprisoned without trial. Despite enormous personal difficulties, Bialiatski has not relented an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus.
monument Instead was born in Moscow in 1987. Commitment to memory and research is central to justifying human rights violations in the days of Josip Stalin and the Soviet era in general. The NGO has also focused on investigating and reporting crimes that marked the wars in Chechnya that were fought in 1994-1995 and then again in 1999-2000. One of its leaders, Natalia Estemirova, was assassinated in Chechnya in 2009. The Russian NGO Memorial, which has just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, reported that a new hearing in the trial aimed at the kidnapping is taking place today
the premises of the organization, whose dissolution was ordered by the Supreme Court of Moscow last December. Memorial has been included by the Russian judiciary in the list of people operating as “foreign agents”.
That Center for Civil Liberties was founded in Kyiv in 2007. The declared aim is to promote human rights and democracy in Ukraine. After Russia’s military offensive began last February, its activists have worked to identify, solve, and document war crimes against civilians.
HERE IS THE INTERVIEW WITH HIS DIRECTOR OLEKSANDRA MATVIICHUK (Andrea Lavazza)
“The Nobel Committee has a strange notion of the word ‘peace’ when the representatives of two countries that have attacked a third jointly receive the Peace Prize. Neither Russian nor Belarusian organizations have been able to organize resistance to war”. Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, commented on Twitter on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Belarusian dissident Ales Bialiatski and the Russian organization Memorial as well as the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties.