Friday, March 29

Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and two human rights organizations from Russia and Ukraine, Nobel Peace Prize winner


The Norwegian Committee honors the Russian NGO Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine with the award

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded this year to the founder of the Belarusian organization Viasna, Alés Bialiatski, the Russian NGO Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, three clear examples of tireless struggle for democracy and Human Rights, whose International Federation they are a part of.

Bialiatski created Viasna (Spring) in 1996. His activity stirred up the president, Alexander Lukashenko, who decided to correct him with a rigged accusation of alleged tax evasion. Bialiatski went to jail in 2011 and was released three years later, in 2014, but, after his participation in the protests against the rigging that Lukashenko perpetrated in the presidential elections of August 9, 2020, Bialiatski was arrested again on July 14 last year and, to this day, is still in custody awaiting trial. He is thus the fourth person to have been awarded the Nobel Prize while in prison, along with Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, Chinese Liu Xiaobo and German Carl von Ossietzky.

Bialiatski’s arrest came amid a brutal campaign orchestrated by the Belarusian dictator against activists, human rights organizations, NGOs and independent media. He described all of them as “a danger to the country’s security” and accused them of having links with “foreign terrorist organizations.”

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Apart from the searches at the venues and the arrests, practically all these associations were being closed down by court order, including Viasna. In total, fifty organizations ceased their activities. The measure even affected the PEN writers’ defense association, the Belarusian journalists’ association, the Minsk School of Commerce, groups teaching foreign languages, helping disabled people and young people to find work.

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The Russian Memorial, founded in 1988, also had to close the door, in December last year, after being subjected to relentless persecution. His work for more than three decades consisted of unmasking the crimes of the communist dictator, Iósif Stalin, achieving the rehabilitation of his victims, paying tribute to them and preventing them from falling into oblivion. Memorial rigorously documented the vicissitudes of Stalinist repression, the purges, the summary executions and the sentences of imprisonment in the Gulag, the terrible prison camps from which it was impossible to escape. Over time, it incorporated assistance to political prisoners and the defense of Human Rights in general into its activity.

“Public Threat”

After being declared a “foreign agent” in 2016, its ban was carried out at the request of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, on the grounds that “Memorial represents a public threat, since it speculates in relation to repression of a political nature (… ) and creates a false image of the Soviet Union as a terrorist state.

The indictment also included “violations of foreign agent legislation.” Its ban, as in Belarus, was framed by the largest wave of repression launched by the Kremlin against its critics. It intensified in 2021 with the arrest and imprisonment of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalni, in addition to the dismantling of his platform, the so-called Foundation for the Fight against Corruption (FBK), and continues today against those who speak out against the war in Ukraine and the “partial mobilization” promulgated by the president, Vladimir Putin, on September 21.

Memorial has also been sentenced for “apology of terrorism and extremism” for the sole fact of ensuring the conditions of detention of people accused of crimes of terrorism, generally members of radical Islamic organizations. The dissolved NGO explained in the trial that ensuring that humane treatment is guaranteed in prison, even for terrorists, does not mean agreeing with their activities, much less justifying or apologizing for them.

investigate crimes

Memorial emerged in 1988 from the hands of Soviet dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov, with the main objective of investigating the crimes committed during the Stalin era. But later, especially after Putin came to power, he extended his investigations against all kinds of abuses in other areas, for example, the atrocities committed by troops and security forces in Chechnya or by Russian mercenaries in Ukraine and other countries. The person in charge of Memorial in Chechnya, Natalia Estemírova, was kidnapped and later shot dead in the head in July 2009. So far the crime has not been clarified.

For its part, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties was founded in 2007 to protect human rights and promote democracy in Ukraine. This organization has played a crucial role in strengthening Ukrainian civil society and lobbying the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy, the Nobel Committee said in a statement.


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