French President Emmanuel Macron expressed his support for imprisoned Belarusian human rights activist and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Beliatski during a phone call Sunday with his wife Natalia Pinchuk.
“He wanted to show his support for the (activist) and his relatives,” while Ales Beliatski has been jailed again since July 2021, Elysée said. “The President of the Republic has expressed his confidence in the desire of Belarusian society to live in peace on the European continent,” the French Presidency stressed.
“It also reaffirmed France’s commitment to human rights defenders around the world,” he added.
“Strong defenders of human rights in Europe” for Macron
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly on Friday to Ales Beliatski, the Russian NGO Memorial – affected by a dissolution order – and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, which works to document “Russian war crimes” in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Emmanuel Macron then celebrated the award ceremony for the “unwavering defenders of human rights in Europe”.
The Nobel Committee has urged Minsk to release Ales Beliatski, founder of the Viasna (“Spring”) Human Rights Center.
The 60-year-old activist was jailed again during mass demonstrations against the 2020 re-election of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko, seen as fraudulent by Westerners. He had been there before, from 2011 to 2014. The Belarusian regime has claimed that Alfred Nobel, the inventor of the award, is “turning in his grave” at such a “politicized” decision.
Source: BFM TV
