Belarus on Friday denounced the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Belarusian human rights defender Ales Beliatski, a co-winner with two NGOs.
“In recent years, decisions – and we are talking about the peace prize – have become so politicized that Alfred Nobel can no longer roll over in his grave,” the spokesman for Belarusian diplomacy, Anatoly Glaz, reacted on Twitter.
Alfred Nobel is the founder of the eponymous prizes. In a very symbolic election in favor of “peaceful coexistence”, the Nobel Peace Prize winner crowned this Friday a trio of “champions of human rights” in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, three of the main actors in a Ukrainian conflict tainted with atrocities.
Oppose Lukashenko’s re-election
The prestigious prize was awarded jointly to the Belarusian activist Ales Beliatski, imprisoned in his country, the Russian NGO Memorial – affected by a dissolution order from the Russian authorities – and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, which works to document the “crimes of Russian war” in the ongoing conflict.
Ales Beliatski, 60, is the founder of the Center for the Defense of Human Rights Viasna (“Spring”). He had been jailed again during mass protests against the 2020 re-election of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko as fraudulent.
Bringing together tens of thousands of demonstrators for months, the protest movement linked to the presidential elections was harshly repressed: mass arrests -at least 37,000 according to the UN-, torture, forced exile and imprisonment of opponents, journalists and NGO leaders. .
Supported at the time by Russia, Lukashenko, who has clung to power since 1994, has now made his country one of Russia’s very few allies in its offensive against Ukraine.
A prize against authoritarian regimes
“The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honor three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence in the three neighboring countries of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine,” said its chair, Berit Reiss-Andersen.
In doing so, the committee has unsurprisingly set out to score a blow against the war in Ukraine that has plunged Europe into the most serious security crisis since World War II. But the five members of the Nobel committee refrained from direct criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had launched the invasion of his Ukrainian neighbor on February 24.
Asked if it was a poisoned gift for the Russian president who turns 70 this very day, Berit Reiss-Andersen said that this award was not directed against him but that his “authoritarian” regime, like that of Belarus, had to stop . the repression
“This award is not for Vladimir Putin for his birthday or for anything else, except that his government, like the Belarusian government, is an authoritarian government that represses human rights activists,” he said to be worthwhile.
Source: BFM TV
