The Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday called on Belarus to release activist Ales Beliatski, the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, along with two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Russia and Ukraine.
“Our message is to urge the Belarusian authorities to release Beliatski and we hope that this will happen and that he will come to Oslo to receive the prize,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Berit Reiss-Andersen said.
“But there are thousands of political prisoners in Belarus and I am afraid that my wish may not be very realistic,” he admitted at the press conference after announcing the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.
In addition to Ales Beliatski, the prize was awarded to the Russian NGO Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties of Ukraine.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be awarded in Oslo on December 10.
In prison since 2020, Beliatski, 60, has been the face of human rights advocacy in Belarus.
In 1996, he founded the NGO Viasna (Spring) during massive protest actions against the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko, in power since 1994.
Initially created to help political prisoners, the organization expanded its work and registered as the Viasna Human Rights Center in 1999.
Since then, he has been seen as instrumental in monitoring rights abuses in Belarus, from arrests at demonstrations to defending political prisoners and monitoring elections.
A member of the International Federation for Human Rights and based in Minsk, Viasna says it has around 200 members across the country, with representation in most cities.
During the protest movement against Lukashenko’s re-election for the sixth consecutive term in 2020, in an election considered fraudulent, Viasna documented thousands of testimonies of torture victims of people detained at the time.
In reaction, Beliatsky was arrested in 2021 for alleged tax offences.
This is not the first time that Beliatsky has been in prison, as he was jailed for almost three years, from 2011 to 2014.
At the time, the authorities also claimed tax problems, but his arrest came a few months after a presidential election that had already led to severely repressed protest demonstrations, according to the French news agency AFP.
In August 2020, just days after Lukashenko’s re-election, Beliatsky said there was “real terror” in the country.
“The objective is very simple: maintain power at all costs and sow fear in society,” he denounced then, quoted by AFP.
In announcing the prize today, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said authorities in Minsk “have repeatedly sought to silence” Beliatsky.
“Despite enormous personal difficulties, Beliatsky did not give up one iota in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus,” he added.
Lukashenko, 68, is the first and only president of the Republic of Belarus, a former republic of the former Soviet Union.
An ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Lukashenko supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24 this year.
Source: TSF
