This Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin is celebrating his 70th birthday. The Nobel Committee has a special gift for him this year. This year’s decision from Oslo is a clear statement against his politics. While Russia was still a partial aspect of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize – at that time the Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov and his independent newspaper “Novaya Gazeta” were honored together with the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa – today Moscow’s aggressive policy is the focus.
Meanwhile, Novaya Gazeta is banned in Russia and appears in exile in Latvia – and Vladimir Putin has started a new war in Ukraine, backed by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
Now the Belarusian human rights activist Ales Byaljazki, whose organization Wiasna 96 has been monitoring the human rights situation in the dictatorship of Belarus for decades and keeps a list of political prisoners with 1,348 entries, has now been honored. Byaljazki himself has been part of it for more than a year. Without Putin’s backing, Lukashenko would not have politically survived the mass protests after the rigged presidential election in August 2020.
The Russian human rights organization Memorial, which was forcibly dissolved a few days after the invasion of Ukraine, also received an award. She recalls Soviet mass repression and criticizes Russia’s state history policy – which laid the foundation for Putin’s war propaganda in the Ukraine war.
The Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv is the third honored organization. She monitors the human rights situation in Ukraine. Today she documents Russian war crimes in Ukraine and keeps a list of people kidnapped by Russian forces in the occupied territories.
Anna Politkovskaya would have been happy about the decision of the Nobel Committee. The journalist from “Novaya Gazeta” reported critically about Vladimir Putin and his war in Chechnya. 16 years ago today she was shot dead in the entrance of her house in Moscow.
