The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to human rights activists in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine against the backdrop of harsh crackdowns by Minsk and Moscow on dissent and the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The head of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, said on October 7 that jailed Belarusian human rights activist Ales Byalyatski, Russian rights group Memorial, and Ukraine’s Center For Civil Liberties, had been awarded the prize for 2022.
The committee said the laureates have made an outstanding effort to document “war crimes, human right abuses, and the abuse of power” while demonstrating “the significance of civil society for peace and democracy.”
Despite the announcement coming on the 70th birthday of President Vladimir Putin, Norwegian Nobel Committee chief Berit Reiss-Andersen said that while the awarding of the prize to those critical of him and regimes like his was not a direct message to the Russian leader, it was a way to highlight the “way civil society and human rights advocates are being suppressed.”
French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the decision, calling the winners “unswerving defenders of human rights in Europe.”
“Ales Byalyatski, the Memorial NGO in Russia and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine: the Nobel Peace Prize pays tribute to unswerving defenders of human rights in Europe. As peacemakers, they can count on France’s support,” Macron wrote on Twitter.
U.S. President Joe Biden congratulated the winners for championing human rights in the face of “intimidation and oppression.”
The winners “remind us that, even in dark days of war, in the face of intimidation and oppression, the common human desire for rights and dignity cannot be extinguished,” Biden said in a statement.
The 60-year-old Byalyatski, who founded the Vyasna (Spring) rights group in Belarus, is currently in prison on tax evasion charges his supporters have rejected as politically motivated.
Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled Belarusian opposition leader, said she was proud that Byalyatski received the award and it will mean the world will pay more attention to Belarus and its political prisoners.
“Of course, I would like to hug him. I remember the last time when we met each other he said: ‘Svyatlana, do what you do. Defend Belarus on the international stage. Talk about us. We, as human rights defenders, will do our job,'” she told RFE/RL’s Belarus Service during a meeting of EU political leaders in Prague.
She added that the award highlights the importance of Belarus in the European context.
“I hope that this will give our political friends certain push to draw attention to Belarus even more, work more, put pressure on the regime so that all political prisoners, including Ales Byalyatski, will be released as soon as possible.”
Since a 2020 presidential election handed authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth term in power despite opposition and international cries that the vote was rigged, thousands of people have been beaten, detained, and tortured by security forces for voicing dissent.
Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatol Hlaz said a number of decisions by the Nobel Committee in recent years had been “so politicized that…Alfred Nobel had to turn over in his coffin.”
He added in comments quoted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the Belarusian government “simply lost all interest in it at a certain stage.”
Olav Njolstad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, dismissed the criticism. “I’m quite sure we understand Alfred Nobel’s will and intentions better than the dictatorship in Minsk,” he said.
Russia’s Supreme Court shut down Memorial, one of the country’s most respected human rights organizations, last December saying the group had violated the controversial law on “foreign agents.”
Memorial has since created a new group, Memorial, The Center To Defend Human Rights, which operates without the status of being a legal entity.
The prize was announced on the same day that a court in Moscow was holding a hearing on seizing Memorial’s assets, the rights group noted.
“Putin has banned Memorial, but the world recognizes true heros,” said Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics.
Lana Estemirova, the daughter of Natalya Estemirova, the slain head of the Memorial Human Rights Center’s office in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Chechnya, told RFE/RL that she “cried and was emotionally overwhelmed” when she heard that Memorial was named by the committee.
“Memorial is just an incredibly important organization for the Caucasus,” she said, adding that winning the award will be a blow to the Kremlin-backed, authoritarian leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
“For [Kadyrov], Memorial and my mom were opponents whom he was ready to destroy. They criticized his activities openly and were not scared of him,” Estemirova said.
Kadyrov has been accused by Memorial and other rights groups of overseeing abuses against perceived opponents, roundups and summary procedures by law enforcement, as well as numerous intimidation tactics since taking power with the Kremlin’s backing in 2007.
Natalya Estemirova led Memorial’s office in Chechnya and documented extrajudicial killings, kidnappings, and other abuses by law enforcement officers in the region before she disappeared in Chechnya’s capital, Grozny, on July 15, 2009.
Her body was found hours later in neighboring Ingushetia with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. Nobody has been convicted of her killing.
The Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, founded in 2007, has worked to strengthen Ukraine’s civil society while also pushing to further the rule of law and adherence to international law.
Its work documenting war crimes and human rights violations has gained importance since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“Proud to be awarded #NobelPeacePrize, this is a recognition of work of many human rights activists in Ukraine and not only in Ukraine,” the group said in a tweet.
