BERLIN (AP) — European officials praised this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for activists protecting human rights and democracy in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, while the Belarusian government ignored the decision.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year pushed Moscow’s relations with its western neighbors to a new low point. Even before that, ties had strained over Russian President Vladimir Putin for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, his for authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and the Syrian leader. Bashar Assad, and his crackdown on warring political parties like dissident Alexei Navalny at home.
“I hope the Russian government will read the justification for the peace prize and take it seriously,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said after the Nobel Committee awarded the 2022 prize to jailed Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski, the monument to Russian and Ukrainian rights. Center for Civil Liberties, which focuses on documenting war crimes.
“This sends a signal that keeping civil society on the floor protects its own power. It shows from the outside and is criticized,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron, among the world leaders who rushed to greet the winners, tweeted that his award “pays tribute to the unwavering defenders of human rights in Europe. “
“The peacekeepers know they can count on France’s support,” the French leader said.
NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg congratulated the winners, tweeting that “the right to speak about facts by force is to loosen and open up societies. “
Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod said the award should be considered in the context of the standoff in Ukraine.
“There is war in Europe, so his paintings for peace and human rights are more than ever,” he told the laureates. “Thank you for that. “
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press that the award is “a recognition of all other people who sacrifice their freedom and their lives for (Belarus’s) intelligence. “
Over the past two years, the Belarusian government has carried out a violent crackdown on news hounds and protesters who claim the 2020 presidential election was rigged there, beating thousands, detaining tens of thousands, accusing corporate rights defenders who, according to the opposition, They are politically motivated. Many fled the country for their own safety.
“Physically, you know, this award will not influence your stage, but I’m sure (it will influence) the mood and intentions of other countries to help other people who are bars,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
Svetlana Alexievich, a Belarusian journalist and winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, called Bialiatsky a “legendary figure. “
“What Viasna, founded through him, has done and is doing in the existing circumstances, is in his mind, in his philosophy,” Alexievich said Friday.
He added that Bialiatski is “seriously ill” and wants medical attention, but “is unlikely to come out of the bars. “
The Belarusian Foreign Ministry, for its part, denounced that the Nobel committee to award the prize to Bialiatski is “politicized. “
Ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz said that “in recent years, a number of decisions — and we’re talking about the peace prize — by the Nobel committee have been so politicized that, sorry, Alfred Nobel is tired of handing over his grave. “”
Olav Njølstad, director of Norway’s Nobel Institute, dismissed the criticism.
“I am sure that Alfred Nobel’s will and intentions are greater than the Minsk dictatorship,” he said.
Meanwhile, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also questioned the prize, saying the Nobel committee “has an appeal for the word ‘peace’ if representatives of two countries that attacked a third party get (the prize) together. “
“No Russian or Belarusian organization has organized resistance to war,” Mykhailo Podolik tweeted. “This year’s Nobel Prize is ‘incredible. ‘”
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