Ales Bialiatski, Nobel Peace Prize 2022, along with the Russians of Memorial and the Ukrainians of the Center for Civil Liberties in Kiev, is a historic human rights activist in Belarus, in prison since 2020 when he took part with thousands of Belarusians at demonstrations against the rigged elections by the authoritarian Lukashenko government.
Bialitski, 60, is the founder of the Viasna (“Spring”) Human Rights Center, which was born in 1996 in response to Lukashenko’s brutal crackdown on street protests.
“He has dedicated his life to promoting democracy and peaceful development in his country. Despite enormous personal difficulties, Bialiatski has not yielded an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus,” the committee said. Nobel prize.
Bialitski was arrested and jailed for the first time in 2011 on charges of tax evasion which he has always denied. He was arrested again in 2020 following massive protests over what the opposition claimed were rigged elections in Belarus that kept Lukashenko in power.
Detained without trial
“Despite enormous personal difficulties, Bialiatski has not given in an inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus,” the committee said.
Since the mid-1980s, Bialiatski has been one of the animators of the movement for political rights and freedoms in Belarus, he has conducted several non-violent and non-partisan campaigns to support a vibrant civil society, which has always been committed against the death penalty and for the release of political prisoners. In response, “government authorities have repeatedly tried to silence”, the Committee writes. “He was incarcerated from 2011 to 2014. Following large-scale demonstrations against the regime in 2020, he was arrested again. He is still detained without trial.”