The jailed Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties have won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, in an award the committee said was to honour champions of “peaceful coexistence” during the most tumultuous period in Europe since the second world war.
“The peace prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee. “They have for many years promoted the right to criticise power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.”
She called on Belarus to release Bialiatski from prison so the veteran activist could attend the award ceremony that will take place on 10 December in Oslo City Hall, when each recipient from the three neighbouring countries will receive 10m Swedish crowns (£804,000).
The committee’s decision will be widely seen as a strong rebuke to Vladimir Putin, who turned 70 on Friday, but Reiss-Andersen said the award was not meant to address the Russian president, a strong ally of the authoritarian Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko.
“This prize is not addressing President Putin, not for his birthday, or in any other sense – except that his government, as the government in Belarus, is representing an authoritarian government that is suppressing human rights activists,” she said.
The committee said it had chosen the three laureates to honour the champions of “human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence” in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Bialiatski, the head of the Belarus rights group Viasna, was detained last July as part of a sweeping crackdown on the opposition by Lukashenko after huge anti-government demonstrations.
He is the fourth person to receive the Nobel peace prize while in prison or detention, after Carl von Ossietzky of Germany in 1935, Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar in 1991 and Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010.
