The day after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, the leader of the Center for Civil Liberties, Ukraine, praised the work of the other laureates, from Belarus and Russia, and warned those trying to get back a story akin to the Cold War.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to Ales Bialiatski, from Belarus, and human rights groups Memorial from Russia and Center for Civil Liberties from Ukraine.
The Civil Liberties Center was established in Kiev in 2007 to promote human rights and democracy in Ukraine.
Ales Bialiatski, 60, is currently in prison in Belarus and founded the organization Viasna (Spring) in 1996 to help political prisoners and their families after the repression of President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.
The Russian organization Memorial was founded in 1987 to investigate and record crimes committed by the Soviet regime, but it has denounced human rights violations in Russia.
At a press conference in Kiev, Center for Civil Liberties leader Oleksandra Matviychuk warned of the risks posed by those who want to interpret the award as a “brotherhood of nations” award.
“We see – and we should not see this award either – as a Soviet story about the brotherhood of nations”said Oleksandra Matviychuk, adding: “This is a story about fighting a common enemy”.
Matviychuk’s comments come a day after Ukraine expressed mixed reactions to the Nobel Committee’s decision to honor the three laureates.
At the time of the announcement, Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said the panel had decided to honor “three outstanding defenders of human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence”.
Some Ukrainians have expressed outrage at what they see putting Ukraine in the same category as Russia and Belarus, whose territory Moscow has used to wage the ongoing war against Ukraine.
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak mocked the decision in a post on the social network Twitter, saying the committee had an “interesting understanding of the word ‘peace'”.
Belarusian and Russian human rights defenders “fight for the rights of people in dictatorships”, while in Ukraine groups such as the Civil Liberties Center “document the war crimes committed by these dictatorships as Belarusian and Russian missiles were fired at Ukraine,” he wrote. Friday also on Twitter the journalist Anastasia Magazova.
“Despite all the merits of the Russian and Belarusian laureates, Ukrainians do not want the fight for human rights in the three countries to be viewed in the same way,” wrote Magazova, who has been writing about Ukraine for German and Ukrainian publications since 2014.
At today’s press conference, Matviychuk rejected the claim that awarding the prize to representatives of the three countries at the same time diminishes its importance.
The award, “belonging to all the people of Ukraine fighting for freedom and democracy,” is a symbol of the struggle “for your and our freedom,” the leader said, referring to a phrase often repeated by Soviet dissidents.
“Russia has not yet surpassed its imperial complex. This is a threat. The same as in Belarus, where (President Aleksander) Lukashenko turned his country over to occupation,” said the center’s executive director, Oleksandra Romantsova.
Romantsova praised Bialiatsky’s work and the Memorial, which was highlighted as the first organization to document Russia’s war crimes during the first war from 1994 to 1996 in Chechnya, the Muslim-majority region on Russia’s southern flank that fought two wars with Moscow for independence.
“If the world had paid attention to the war crimes in Chechnya from the beginning, we would not have had the war in Ukraine today,” Romantsova continued.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has not yet contacted the Civil Liberties Center to congratulate him on the award, but both Matviychuk and Romantsova are devaluing this silence in light of the ongoing war.
It was unlikely that Zelenskiy would be able to come into contact with any of them on Friday after the Nobel Prize was announced, Matviychuk said.
“I don’t want anyone to go through a war, but this difficult moment gives us time to show the best qualities we have, from the farmer who protects his land or tractor to the president who doesn’t flee the country during the war.” emphasized Matviychuk.
Source: DN
