‘CHAMPIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS’

Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Human Rights Campaigners in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine

Winner Ales Bialiatski is still detained without trial for his activism.

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 was awarded to one individual and two organizations which have campaigned for human rights, the Nobel committee announced Friday. The winners— Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, Russian organization Memorial, and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties—were praised by the committee as “three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence” in their three neighboring countries. Authorities in Belarus—considered Europe’s last dictatorship—have repeatedly attempted to silence the pro-democracy advocacy of Bialiatski, who is still detained without trial after large-scale demonstrations against the regime in 2020. Memorial, meanwhile, was founded after the fall of the Soviet Union and is now the largest human rights organization in Russia, providing information on political prisoners; it too has faced violence and censorship from the Kremlin. The Center for Civil Liberties was created in 2007 and since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it has worked tirelessly to document Russian war crimes against Ukraine’s civilian population.

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Dan Ladden-HallBreaking News Editor

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