“Champions of human rights, democratization and peaceful co-operation”: Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, president of Belarus, and a former Belarusian politician
Writing on Twitter, von der Leyen said: “They show the true power of civil society in the fight for democracy. Tell their stories. Share their engagement news. Help make the world a better place.
Bialiatski was welcomed by the Belarus opposition politician, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya. She commented on the significance of the prize, saying that it is an important recognition for all of the people fighting for democracy in the country. All political prisoners must be released.
The Center for Civil Liberties and the Memorial were both awarded the peace prize on Saturday along with the jailed Belarusian advocate.
The Norwegian award committee wants to honor three “champions of human rights, democratization and peaceful co-operation” in the countries of Russia and Ukraine.
Mr Bialiatski, who is also known by the acronym Bialiatski, has been at the forefront of the human rights movement in Eastern Europe since the late 80’s, when he was a member of the Soviet Union.
She said the committee was aware of the risk that Bialiatski may face from authorities in his home country, of which he is a citizen.
The 2022 Nobel Prize Winners are Vladimir Bialiatski and Vladimir Petrovich Bialitski, formerly of the Human Rights Center in Ukraine
She believes that the people behind these organizations have decided to take a risk and pay high prices to fight for what they believe in. “We do pray that this price will not affect him negatively, but we hope it might boost his morale.
The Supreme Court of Russia ordered the closing of the Memorial, a well-known human rights organization, after it spent more than two decades exposing atrocities committed during the Stalinist era.
“The organization has also been standing at the forefront of efforts to combat militarism and promote human rights and government based on the rule of law,” said Reiss-Andersen.
“I dare not say what that this award might mean,” Natalia Pinchuk, Mr. Bialiatski’s wife, said in a telephone interview from Minsk, the Belarusian capital, after he was announced as one of the prize’s 2022 recipients on Friday. “Of course, I have hopes, but I’m afraid to express them. This fear is always there.
The center has taken a stance to strengthen the civil society of Ukraine, so that they could become a state governed by rule of law.
“For a long time, we worked in a country that was invisible, that’s why the award was important for the Center for Civil Liberties,” said a representative of the organization.
Russia waged a war in Ukraine with the assistance of Belarus seven months ago. It was speculated that the committee would attempt to pay tribute to activists in affected nations over the course of the award.
The three winners will share the prize money of 10,000,000 Swedish krona ($900,000). The Nobel Prizes will be officially awarded to the laureates at a ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
Report of the case of Mr. Bialiatski, an exiled member of Viasna and a leader of Tutajshyja
Held without formal charges since his detention outside Minsk more than a year ago, Mr. Bialiatski is under investigation, along with other jailed members of Viasna, for organizing “protest, extremist and terrorist actions,” according to a statement in late September by Belarusian investigators.
He was active in Tutajshyja, or “The Locals,” a dissident cultural organization that helped lay the groundwork in the late Soviet period for a movement calling for the independence of Belarus.
Bialiatski, meanwhile, has documented human rights abuses in Belarus since the 1980s. He founded the organization Viasna, or Spring, in 1996 after a referendum that consolidated the authoritarian powers of president and close Russian ally, Lukashenko.
The director of the Maksim Bahdanovic museum was forced to give up his post after Mr. Lukashenko started cracking down on the country.
“I hope this sends a strong signal to both Lukashenko and his prison wardens that the world is watching and will definitely punish the perpetrators,” Mr. Sannikov, who now lives in exile in Poland, said in an interview.
The 2011 charges related to money he had received from abroad to help fund the Viasna rights group, of which he was president, and were based in part on confidential banking information provided to Belarusian prosecutors by Lithuania and Poland. The case, Mr. Sannikov said, showed how the European authorities had sometimes been complicit in helping Mr. Lukashenko consolidate his increasingly autocratic regime.
Europe and the West in general “do not pay enough attention to human rights in Belarus,” he said, describing conditions in Belarusian prisons as “absolutely terrible,” including frequent use of torture and other abuses.
Natalia Satsunkevich, a Viasna activist who now lives in exile, said that Mr. Bialiatski was being held in inhumane conditions.
Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and President Lukashenko of Ukraine: “War crimes” in Ukraine is the future,” said Oleksandra Matviichuk
Awarding him the Peace Prize, along with recipients from Ukraine and Russia, she said, was “very symbolic” and highlighted “how closely these countries are now connected by war,” although that concept met with criticism from some in Ukraine on Friday.
She said the prize had come as a total surprise. She didn’t hear what was said because she was outside on a loud street and she received a call from the prize committee.
A friend who had been attempting to reach her was called back by her, and she realized that her husband had been selected for the award.
Russian forces were allowed to use the territory of Belarus as a base for their invasion of Ukraine on February 24 after Mr. Lukashenko repaid the Kremlin for its support.
Mr. Sannikov hoped that the attention would translate into support for Mr. Lukashenko’s opponents.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a top Ukranian official, wrote on his website that neither Russian nor Belarusian organizations were able to organize resistance to the war.
Memorial had condemned the country’s actions in Crimean, but protests against the war had been subdued. The Belarusian winner, Ales Bialatski, argued in 2014 that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that year gave cover to domestic repression in Belarus.
One journalist commented that this year’s shared prize gave the impression that the challenges faced by all of them were the same.
The Ukrainian group, Center for Civil Liberties, has been documenting the Russian war crimes against the Ukrainian civilian population since the invasion began.
The Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine is one of the groups that Matviichun accepted the prize on and they said this would help with justice for people affected by war.
She wrote that the mass mobilizing of ordinary people in various countries of the world can change history faster than the United Nations.
“In collaboration with international partners, the center is playing a pioneering role with a view to holding the guilty parties accountable for their crimes.”
Oleksandra Matviichuk, the organization’s head, said on Facebook she was “happy” that the Center had received the prize “together with our friends and partners.”
Ukrainian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk called for an international tribunal to Putin and Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko to justice over “war crimes” in her acceptance speech.
It had been widely anticipated that the Nobel decision-makers would focus attention on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, given its aftershocks in security and stability across the globe.
The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, for example, was seen as a longshot given that peace negotiations seem to offer little hope of a resolution to the conflict.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a peace prize organizer, has awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize for Human Rights and Civil Liberties for the work of civil society
“The committee is giving a message about the importance of political freedoms, civil liberties and an active civil society as being part of what makes for a peaceful society,” Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told CNN. “I think that’s a very important message.”
“This prize has a lot of layers on it; it’s covering a lot of ground and giving more than one message,” he added. “(It is) a prize about citizenship, and what is the best kind of citizenship if we wish to be citizens of peaceful countries in a peaceful world.”
The chair of the committee said that this year had a war in Europe and a war that has a global effect on people all over the world.
The winner of the peace prize from Russia criticized President Putin’s war on Ukranian in his acceptance speech.
The new Laureates were recognized for the outstanding efforts to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power.
”The Minsk regime is fighting civil society with violence and imprisonment,” Baerbock said, adding ”this is as much a daily disgrace as Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s war (in Ukraine).”