(Bloomberg) -- A jailed Belarusian human rights advocate won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 along with two organizations that protect civil society in Russia and Ukraine.
Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, Memorial of Russia and Ukraine's Center for Civil Liberties were awarded the 10-million Swedish kronor ($900,000) prize by the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee on Friday.
“The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries,” the committee said in a statement. “They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens.”
Bialiatski is the second citizen in Belarus's independent history to receive a Nobel Prize after Svetlana Alexievich won the award in literature seven years ago.
“Government authorities have repeatedly sought to silence Ales Bialiatski,” the committee said. “Since 2020, he is still detained without trial. Despite tremendous personal hardship, Mr Bialiatski has not yielded an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus.”
The announcement was unexpected, with opposition leaders in Belarus and Russia, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Alexey Navalny, long tipped as potential winners. And it comes on the day Russian President Vladimir Putin celebrates his 70th birthday.
“This prize is not addressing President Putin, not for his birthday or in any other sense, except that his government and the government in Belarus is representing an authoritarian government that is suppressing human rights activists,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the committee, told reporters in Oslo. “We always give a prize for something and to somebody, and not against anybody.”
Last year's winners were journalists Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov, with previous laureates including Mother Teresa, Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Martin Luther King and the European Union.
Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden's central bank in 1968.
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