Nobel Peace Prize for the Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and the Russian organizations Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties

Image of the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.NIUSBialiatski is the founder of the human rights organization Viasna Memorial is the most important humanitarian organization in Russia although the authorities persecute them forcing them to closeThe Center for Civil Liberties is committed to identifying and documenting Russian war crimesThe Nobel Peace Prize 2022 has remembered the war between Ukraine and Russia. The organization has awarded the prize to the Russian organization for human rights Memorial and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties, for “for many years promoting the right to criticize power and protecting the fundamental rights of citizens”, it also rewards the activist and political prisoner Ales Bialiatski from Belarus. The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries. They have been chosen, according to the Swedish Academy, because “they have made an extraordinary effort to document the crimes of war, human rights abuses and abuse of power.Together they demonstrate the importance of civil society for peace and democracy”Who they are:Ales Bialiatski was one of the initiators of the democratic movement that emerged in Belarus in the middle of the 1980s. He has dedicated his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his home country. Among other things, he founded the Viasna (Spring) organization in 1996 in response to controversial constitutional reforms that gave the president dictatorial powers and triggered widespread demonstrations. Viasna provided support to jailed protesters and their families. In the years that followed, Viasna evolved into a broad-based human rights organization that documented and protested the authorities’ use of torture against political prisoners. Bialiatski was imprisoned from 2011 to 2014. Following large-scale demonstrations escalation against the regime in 2020, he was arrested again. He remains in detention without trial. Despite tremendous personal difficulties, Bialiatski has not given an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus. The human rights organization Memorial was established in 1987 by human rights activists in the former Soviet Union who wanted make sure that the victims of the communist regime’s oppression were never forgotten. It is the largest human rights organization in Russia. During the Chechen wars, Memorial collected and verified information on abuses and war crimes perpetrated against the civilian population by Russian and pro-Russian forces. In 2009, the head of the Memorial branch in Chechnya, Natalia Estemirova, was killed because of this work. In December 2021, the authorities decided to forcibly liquidate Memorial and permanently close the documentation center. The closures went into effect in the following months, but the people behind Memorial refuse to close. Commenting on the forced dissolution, President Yan Rachinsky declared: “No one plans to give up.” The Center for Civil Liberties was founded in kyiv in 2007 with the purpose of promoting human rights and democracy in Ukraine. The center has taken a position to strengthen Ukrainian civil society and put pressure on the authorities to make Ukraine a full-fledged democracy. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Center for Civil Liberties has been committed to identifying and documenting Russian war crimes against Ukrainian civilians. In collaboration with international partners, the center is playing a pioneering role in holding the guilty to account for their crimes.