by Gwladys Fouche
OSLO (Reuters) – Russia wants to make Ukraine a “dependent dictatorship” like Belarus, the wife of Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski said on Saturday as she accepted the award on her husband’s behalf. imprisoned.
Ales Bialiatski, the Russian rights group Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties won the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize in October, amid the war in Ukraine that followed Russia’s invasion of the country .
Receiving the award on behalf of her husband at Oslo City Hall, Natallia Pinchuk said Ales Bialiatski dedicated it to “millions of Belarusian citizens who stood up and took action in the streets and online to defend their civil rights”.
“It highlights the dramatic situation and the struggle for human rights in the country,” she added, adding that she was taking up her husband’s words.
Natallia Pinchuk has met her husband in prison once since he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, behind a glass wall, she said at a press conference on Friday.
“I know exactly what kind of Ukraine would suit Russia and Putin – a dependent dictatorship. The same as today’s Belarus, where the voice of the oppressed people is ignored and scorned,” she said. said Saturday, citing her husband.
Belarusian security police arrested Ales Bialiatsky, 60, and others in July 2021 as part of a crackdown on opponents of the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Authorities had moved to shut down non-state media and human rights groups after mass protests against a presidential election deemed rigged by the opposition.
Ales Bialiatski is the fourth person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in detention, after German Carl von Ossietzky in 1935, Chinese Liu Xiaobo in 2010 and Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest, in 1991.
The chairman of Norway’s Nobel committee said at Saturday’s ceremony that the committee’s “thoughts are with all prisoners of conscience in Belarus”.
“In particular, we are thinking of Ales Bialiatski in his dark and isolated prison cell in Minsk,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen. “You are not alone. We are on your side.”
The UN human rights chief said in March that nearly 1,100 activists, opposition members and journalists were being held on “political grounds” in Belarus and called for their release.
The Belarusian delegation to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva disputed this information, calling it “allegations and false accusations”.
Belarus and Russia are officially part of a “union of states” and are closely linked economically and militarily. Lukashenko’s reliance on Moscow deepened after Russia helped him quell protests following the disputed 2020 election.
Russia used Belarus as a staging post for its failed advance on Kyiv from February 24.
(French version Benjamin Mallet)