The Nobel Prize for Human Rights and Democracy: The Story of Mr. Bialiatski, the Center for Civil Liberties, and the War on Ukraine

The prize was won by winners in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine for promoting the right to criticize power, protecting fundamental rights of citizens, and documenting war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power.

In its 121-year history, the prize has only been awarded once to Ukraine. Many Ukrainians are upset that they need to share the award with other countries after the Center for Civil Liberties won.

The human rights activist Mr Bialiatski has not yielded one inch in his fight for human rights and democracy, despite tremendous personal hardship according to the Norwegian chairwoman of the committee for the abolition of Racial Discrimination.

She said the Nobel Committee was aware of the possibility that by awarding him the prize Bialiatski might face additional scrutiny from authorities in Belarus.

“But we also have the point of view that the individuals behind these organizations, they have chosen to take a risk and pay a high price and show courage to fight for what they believe in,” she said. We hope this price will not affect him in a negative way.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Memorial became one of Russia’s most prominent human rights watchdogs. It has worked to expose the abuses and atrocities of 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.

The way civil society and human rights advocates are being suppressed is related to the attention Mr. Putin has drawn on himself. We would like to discuss that with this prize.

“The center has taken a stand to strengthen Ukrainian civil society and pressure the authorities to make Ukraine a full fledged democracy, to develop Ukraine into a state governed by rule of law,” said Reiss-Andersen.

A representative of the Center for Civil Liberties, Volodymyr Yavorskyi, said the award was important for the organization, because “for many years we worked in a country that was invisible.”

Their victory comes seven months after Russia began its war on Ukrainians with the help of a small country. That ongoing conflict loomed heavily over this year’s award, and it had been speculated that the committee would seek to pay tribute to activists in the affected nations.

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.

The case of Lukashenko, the director of the Maksim Bahdanovic museum, and the abuse of human rights in Belarus

She hasn’t seen her husband in a few days, and still doesn’t know what he’ll be put on trial for. Sometimes their letters get delivered, sometimes they don’t.

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.

The case was part of a sweeping and brutal reprisal on dissent that took place after huge street protests erupted in 2020. The protests were allowed to take place by the Russian security forces, but only after Mr. Lukashenko sensationally claimed he had won a huge election victory in August 2020. It was his sixth election “victory.”

The director of the Maksim Bahdanovic Museum in the country was forced out when Mr. Lukashenko started cracking down on the country.

Mr. Sannikov, who lives in exile in Poland, said he hoped the world was watching and would definitely punish the culprits.

The money he received from abroad to be used for Viasna was based on confidential banking information provided to the prosecutors by the two Baltic countries. The case, Mr. Sannikov said, showed how the European authorities had sometimes been complicit in helping Mr. Lukashenko consolidate his increasingly autocratic regime.

He stated that the human rights in his country are not adequately taken care of by Europe and the West.

Natalia Satsunkevich, a Viasna activist who lives in exile, told a Russian television station that Mr. Bialiatski was being held in abysmal conditions.

On the origin of the Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine and the role of Center for Civil Liberties in shaping international human rights reform – a surprise surprise for Ukrainians

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 that the prize came as a total surprise. She said she had received a phone call, apparently from the prize committee in Oslo, early Friday but had been unable to hear what was being said because she was outside on a noisy street.

When she called back a friend who had been trying to reach her, she found out her husband had been selected for the award.

Mr Lukashenko agreed to allow Russian forces to use his country as a base for their invasion of Ukraine, paying the Kremlin back for its support.

Mr. Sannikov said that he hoped that the attention of the community would translate into support for the opponents of Lukashenko.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a top Ukrainian official, wrote onTwitter that neither Russian nor Belarusian organizations were able to organize resistance to the war.

The Memorial, a human rights group in Russia, had opposed the invasion of Crimea, but protests in Russia 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.

Ukrainian journalist Olga Tokariuk joined the chorus on social media, writing that this year’s shared prize gives the impression that Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia face the same challenges.

Few believed the future of human rights in the region would be determined by war when the Center for Civil Liberties was founded. The group organized support for activists and journalists imprisoned by the regime of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, when many Ukrainians first heard of it.

Responding to the news that the organization she co-founded won a Nobel Peace Prize, Olexandra Matviychuk wrote that Ukraine can provide an example to activists in other countries pushing through civil rights reform.

She said that the mass voice of people in different countries in the world could change world history faster than the UN.

“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.”

Kiev-Russian rocket shelling and human rights violations: a resolution of a war in Europe and the consequences for the Russian-Baltiv-Israeli peace process

She advocated for the creation of an international tribunal to prosecute the Russian and Belarusian presidents for war crimes.

The decision-makers were expected to pay attention to the effects of Russia’s invasion of Hungary, and not the less serious impact of the conflict in Ukraine.

But those involved in leading military campaigns, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, were seen as longshots given that government-led peace negotiations appear to offer slim hopes of a resolution to the conflict in the near future.

“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 is 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 they were in an unusual situation where a war in Europe was having an effect all over the world.

KYIV, Ukraine — As Russia’s forces lose ground in Ukraine, they continued to rain destruction and death on Ukrainian civilian targets, using artillery and missiles on Thursday and Friday to strike multiple cities and towns, often far from any combat.

The prize for human rights in Russia and other countries was an implicit rebuke to Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine.

Overnight nearly 40 Russian rockets hit Nikopol, on the Dnipro River, damaging at least 10 homes, several apartment blocks and other infrastructure, according to the head of the regional military administration, Valentyn Reznichenko. He said that further shelling on Friday evening killed one man and wounded another.

Rachinsky, the “Fascism” of Wartime: “What Is Right” – A Call to Warfare?

Rachinsky, from Russia’s human rights organization Memorial, claimed resistance to Russia is known as “fascism” under Putin, adding this has become “the ideological justification for the insane and criminal war of aggression against Ukraine.”

The new laureates were honored for “an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power” in their respective countries.

The war has caused millions of displacement and tens of thousands of deaths since February. Rachinsky’s speech occurred just days after Putin publicly vowed he would “consistently fight for our interests” in continuing the conflict.

The Russian authorities, which shut down Rachinsky’s organization last year, reportedly warned him not to accept the award, as he confirmed to the BBC. In the interview, he said he decided to ignore the advice despite his safety threats.

“In today’s Russia, no one’s personal safety can be guaranteed,” Rachinsky told the BBC. “Yes, many have been killed.” But we know what impunity of the state leads to. … We need to get out of this pit somehow.”

Was our work enough to prevent the catastrophe of February 24? He mentioned the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion. “The monstrous burden that fell on our shoulders that day became heavier after we received the news that the prize had been awarded to us.”