Nobel Peace Prize picks seen as rebuke of Russia
Officials in Europe have praised the awarding of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to activists standing up for human rights and democracy in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine – while authorities in Belarus have scorned the move.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, ties with the West had been fraught over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s backing for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, his support for authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Syrian leader Bashar alAssad, and his repression of political opponents at home.
‘‘I hope the Russian authorities read the justification for the peace prize and take it to heart,’’ Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said after the Nobel Committee awarded the 2022 prize to imprisoned Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, Russian rights group Memorial, and the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties, which is focusing on documenting war crimes.
‘‘It sends a signal that keeping civil society down is protecting one’s own power. It is seen from the outside and it is criticised,’’ Store said.
French President Emmanuel Macron was among the world leaders who quickly hailed the laureates, tweeting that their prize ‘‘pays homage to unwavering defenders of human rights in Europe’’.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg
congratulated the winners, tweeting that ‘‘the right to speak truth to power is fundamental to free and open societies’’.
Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said the award needed to be seen against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine. ‘‘Your work for peace and human rights is therefore more important than ever before,’’ he said to the winners.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said the three groups ‘‘fully deserved’’ the awards.
In Paris, exiled Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya
said the award was ‘‘recognition of all the people who are sacrificing their freedom and lives for the sake of [Belarus]’’.
Over the last two years, Lukashenko’s government has waged a violent crackdown on journalists and protesters who say that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, beating thousands, detaining tens of thousands, and charging rights defenders with cases that the opposition calls politically motivated. Many have fled the country for their own safety.
Bialiatski founded Human
Rights Centre Viasna, a nongovernmental organisation. He was detained following protests in 2020 against Lukashenko’s reelection. He remains in jail without trial, and faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist and writer who won the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature, called Bialiatski ‘‘a legendary figure’’. She said he was ‘‘seriously ill’’ and needed medical treatment, but was ‘‘unlikely to be freed’’.
Belarus’s Foreign Ministry denounced the Nobel committee’s decision to award the prize to Bialiatski as ‘‘politicised’’. Olav Njolstad, director of the 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.
Meanwhile, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also took issue with the award, saying the Nobel Committee ‘‘has an interesting understanding of (the) word ‘peace’ if representatives of two countries that attacked a third one receive (the prize) together’’.
‘‘Neither Russian nor Belarusian organisations were able to organise resistance to the war,’’ Mykhailo Podolyak tweeted.
But Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian lawyer who heads the Centre for Civil Liberties, said the award was for the groups, not the countries they were based in. ‘‘It’s not about the countries, but about the people who are jointly standing up to evil.’’