The director of the Ukrainian NGO who was one of the recipients of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize said this Saturday (10), upon receiving the award in Oslo, that peace in Ukraine cannot be achieved by “laying down arms” against Vladimir’s Russia Putin.
“The people of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world,” said Center for Civil Liberties (CCL) director Oleksandra Matviichuk during the ceremony in the Norwegian capital. “But peace for an attacked country cannot be achieved by laying down its arms. That would not be peace, but occupation,” she added.
CCL shared the Nobel Peace Prize with activist Ales Bialiatski, from Belarus, and Memorial, a human rights group from Russia.
In his speech in Oslo, Memorial President Ian Rachinski criticized Putin’s “senseless and criminal war” on Ukraine.
For Putin, “resisting Russia amounts to fascism”, a distortion that provides “ideological justification for the senseless and criminal war of aggression against Ukraine”, Rachinski said.
Wife represents prizewinner who is arrested
Jailed since July 2021, Ales Bialiatski, 60, was represented at the ceremony in Oslo by his wife, Natallia Pinchuk, who said Russia wants to turn Ukraine into a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus.
According to Pinchuk, Bialiatski dedicated the award to “millions of Belarusian citizens who stood up and took action in the streets and online to defend their civil rights”.
Pinchuk has visited her husband once since he was named a Nobel laureate behind a glass wall in prison, she told a news conference on Friday.
“I know exactly what kind of Ukraine would suit Russia and Putin: a dependent dictatorship. Same as today’s Belarus, where the voice of the oppressed people is ignored and disregarded,” Pinchuk said on Saturday, quoting her husband.
Belarusian police detained Bialiatski, 60, during a crackdown on opponents of the country’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko.
Authorities shut down non-state media outlets and human rights groups after mass protests in August 2020 against a presidential election that the opposition said was rigged.
Bialiatski is the fourth person to win the Nobel Peace Prize while in prison, after Germany’s Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, China’s Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, in 1991.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
