OSLO: This year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureates from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine shared their visions for a fairer world and denounced Russian President Vladimir Cheese friesof the war in Ukraine at the award ceremony on Saturday in the Norwegian capital.
Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties rejected calls for a political compromise that would allow Russia to keep some of the illegally annexed Ukrainian territories, saying that “fighting for peace does not mean giving in to pressure from the aggressor, it means to protect people from his cruelty. ”
Matviichuk was named co-winner of the 2022 Peace Prize in October along with Russian human rights group Memorial and Ales Bialiatski, head of Belarusian rights group Viasna. “Peace cannot be achieved by an attacked country laying down its arms,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “It would not be peace, but occupation. Matviichuk reiterated his earlier call for Putin — and authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who provided his country’s territory to Russian troops to invade Ukraine — to face an international tribunal.
Under the terms of Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1901. Saturday’s award ceremony took place at Oslo City Hall in the presence of King Olav V and queen sonjawhile the other Nobel Prizes were officially awarded at ceremonies in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, later the same day.
Bialiatski, who is imprisoned in Belarus awaiting trial and faces a prison term of up to 12 years, was not allowed to send his speech. His wife, Natallia Pinchuk, made her remarks: “In my homeland, the whole of Belarus is in prison. . . This prize belongs to all my human rights defender friends, all civic activists, tens of thousands of Belarusians who have suffered beatings, torture, arrests, imprisonment. “Bialiatski is the fourth person in the Prize’s 121-year history to receive it in prison or detention.
In December 2021, Russia’s highest court shut down Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest and largest human rights organizations acclaimed for its studies of political repression in the Soviet Union. Memorial’s Jan Rachinsky said in his speech that “the current sad state of civil society in Russia is a direct consequence of its unresolved past. ”
Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties rejected calls for a political compromise that would allow Russia to keep some of the illegally annexed Ukrainian territories, saying that “fighting for peace does not mean giving in to pressure from the aggressor, it means to protect people from his cruelty. ”
Matviichuk was named co-winner of the 2022 Peace Prize in October along with Russian human rights group Memorial and Ales Bialiatski, head of Belarusian rights group Viasna. “Peace cannot be achieved by an attacked country laying down its arms,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “It would not be peace, but occupation. Matviichuk reiterated his earlier call for Putin — and authoritarian Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who provided his country’s territory to Russian troops to invade Ukraine — to face an international tribunal.
Under the terms of Alfred Nobel’s will, the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded by the Norwegian Nobel Committee since 1901. Saturday’s award ceremony took place at Oslo City Hall in the presence of King Olav V and queen sonjawhile the other Nobel Prizes were officially awarded at ceremonies in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, later the same day.
Bialiatski, who is imprisoned in Belarus awaiting trial and faces a prison term of up to 12 years, was not allowed to send his speech. His wife, Natallia Pinchuk, made her remarks: “In my homeland, the whole of Belarus is in prison. . . This prize belongs to all my human rights defender friends, all civic activists, tens of thousands of Belarusians who have suffered beatings, torture, arrests, imprisonment. “Bialiatski is the fourth person in the Prize’s 121-year history to receive it in prison or detention.
In December 2021, Russia’s highest court shut down Memorial, one of Russia’s oldest and largest human rights organizations acclaimed for its studies of political repression in the Soviet Union. Memorial’s Jan Rachinsky said in his speech that “the current sad state of civil society in Russia is a direct consequence of its unresolved past. ”
