The prize committee appointed the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), which works to document alleged war crimes by Russian invaders; Russian Memorial Group for Human Rights; Belarusian human rights defender Alice Bialiatsky was imprisoned as winners of the annual Peace Prize, marking the second year in a row that Putin’s critics were among those appointed for the award.
“They have for many years promoted the right to criticize authority and protect the basic rights of citizens,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee He said in announcing the winners.
Although the commission did not name Putin or Lukashenko In its declaration, it was yet another notable flaw in the repressive means adopted by the award-winning governments of centralizing power and silencing opponents at home and abroad.
Lukashenko, who has brutally suppressed his critics in Belarus since claiming re-election in the 2020 election widely condemned as fraudulent, has allowed his country to be a springboard for Putin’s failed attempt to seize Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. While starting an all-out war against Ukraine, Putin cracked down on critics of the war, political opponents, journalists, and other opponents.
After the commission’s announcement, Oleksandra MatveychukCCL’s chairwoman called for an international tribunal to try Putin, Lukashenko and others for their alleged crimes, and denounced the failure of international organizations to prevent war or protect victims of rights abuses.
Matveychuk wrote in Facebook share. “If we don’t want to live in a world where the rules are set by someone with stronger military capabilities rather than the rule of law, things have to change.”
Noble’s decision has been heralded as a Ukrainian counterattack that continues to liberate swathes of territory from the most famous Russian occupation and uncovers further evidence of the atrocities allegedly committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The Nobel Committee’s choice of Memorial, A veteran organization has exposed the crimes of the Soviet gulag and Russian state abuses since the fall of the Soviet Union, after awarding a peace prize last year to Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, longtime editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta. , described by the commission as “the most independent newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally critical attitude towards power”
memorial was Solution This year, as Putin suppressed dissent after the start of the war, Novaya Gazeta was forced to cease operations in Russia. Muratov later auctioned the prize for the benefit of Ukrainian children.
The awarding of the peace prize to a Russian group and a Belarusian activist drew immediate criticism in Ukraine, where many politicians and activists view ordinary Russians as complicit in Putin’s war.
“The Nobel Committee has an interesting understanding of the word ‘peace’ if representatives of two countries that have attacked a third country receive @Nobel prize Together, “Mykhailo Podolak, adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, He said on Twitter. Neither the Russian nor the Belarusian organizations were able to organize the resistance to the war. This year’s Nobel Prize is ‘fantastic’. “
Announcing its decision, the Nobel Committee called on Belarus to release Bialiatsky, who has spoken out against the decades-old Lukashenko government’s crackdown.
The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said the award is intended for people and entities and is not directed against Putin, who turned 70 on Friday, nor against anyone else.
“The attention that Mr. Putin has drawn to himself and is relevant in this context is the way in which civil society and human rights defenders are being suppressed,” Reiss Andersen told reporters in Oslo.
Belarusian opposition figures praised the award and called for the release of political prisoners. Exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya describe it It is “an important recognition for all Belarusians who are fighting for freedom and democracy.”
The prize, established by the will of Swedish businessman and inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895, is a gold medal and a prize of $1.14 million. Unlike the other prizes for physics, medicine, and other disciplines, which are chosen and awarded in Sweden, the Nobel chose a Norwegian committee, chosen by that country’s parliament, to administer the Peace Prize.
The award is a boon for Memorial, Russia’s oldest rights organization, which has come under heavy pressure from Putin’s government in recent years as part of a crackdown on civil activists and rights groups that accelerated last year ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
Last year, Russian courts overturned both Memorial wings after earlier declaring them to be “foreign agents,” order The organization was dissolved in a move that shocked global human rights advocates and Russia observers. The group publishes a list of political prisoners in Russia and maintains a large archive on human rights violations committed by the Russian security services since Soviet times.
The International Memorial Society is known for its research and memorialization of the executions and imprisonment of dissidents in the Soviet era. Its human rights wing, Memorial Center for Human Rights, exposes current abuses by Russian authorities and played a leading role in exposing military atrocities during the Chechen wars of the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
In a parallel effort in Belarus, Bialiatsky founded the Vyasna Center in 1996 to track cases of persecution of activists and document torture and ill-treatment of political prisoners by Belarusian law enforcement authorities.
He was first arrested in 2011 and spent three years behind bars on tax evasion charges that he and his supporters saw as direct retaliation for Vyasna’s activities, which were instrumental in helping Belarusian civil society track the largest crackdown in the country’s modern history after the 2020 protests.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in August 2020 to denounce Lukashenko’s declared victory in what is widely seen as a rigged election that allowed Lukashenko to serve a sixth consecutive term. Lukashenko’s pursuit of protesters in retaliation led to a mass exodus from the country. However, thousands were arrested and in some cases tortured in prisons.
At least seven Vyasna activists, including Bialiatsky, were arrested in 2021. Bialiatsky was accused of tax evasion, as he had previously, and denied the charge.
In Ukraine, CCL originally launched the Euromaidan SOS Initiative to document and publicize human rights violations during the wave of anti-government protests in 2013 and 2014. It has since focused on events related to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists. In the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine. The group also created a file Map of enforced disappearances through Ukraine.
Last month Matvichuk and CCL received another award known as Alternative NobelRight Livelihood Award for “Building Sustainable Democratic Institutions in Ukraine and Forging a Path to International Accountability for War Crimes.”
Elaine Francis and Paul Shim in London, William Branigin in Washington, Kostyantin Khodov in Kyiv, Isabel Khorshodian in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, and Natalia Abakumova in Riga, Latvia contributed to this report. Dixon and Ilyushina reported from Riga.
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