On Friday, activists from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a strong rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose invasion of Ukraine infuriated the international community and highlighted his authoritarian rule.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee bestowed the prize for 2022 on imprisoned Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian organization Memorial, and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee’s chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen, stated that the panel wanted to honour “three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy, and peaceful coexistence.”
“Through their consistent efforts in favor of human values and anti-militarism and principles of law, this year’s laureates have revitalized and honored Alfred Nobel’s vision of peace and fraternity between nations, a vision most needed in the world today,” she told reporters in Oslo.
Asked whether the Nobel Committee was intentionally sending a signal to Putin, who celebrated his 70th birthday Friday, Reiss-Andersen said that “we always give a prize for something and to somebody and not against anyone.”
“This prize is not addressing President Putin, not for his birthday or in any other sense, except that his government, as the government in Belarus, is representing an authoritarian government that is suppressing human rights activists,” she said.
Bialiatski was a leader of the Belarusian democracy movement in the mid-1980s and has continued to advocate for human rights and civil liberties in the authoritarian country. He founded the Human Rights Center Viasna, a non-governmental organisation.
He was arrested in 2020 after protests against the re-election of Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko, a close Putin ally. He is still imprisoned without being tried.
“Despite tremendous personal hardship, Mr Bialiatski has not yielded one inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus,” Reiss-Andersen said, adding that the Nobel panel was calling on Belarusian authorities to release him.
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