Nobel Peace Prize winners blast Russian President Putin's invasion of Ukraine

The winners of this years Nobel Peace Prize from Belarus Russia and Ukraine shared their visions of a fairer world and denounced Russian President Vladimir Putins war in Ukraine during Saturdays award ceremonyOleksandra Matviichuk of Ukraines Center for Civil Liberties dismissed calls for a political compromise that would allow Russia to retain some of the illegally annexed Ukrainian territories saying that fighting for peace does not mean yielding to pressure of the aggressor it means protecting people from its crueltyPeace cannot be reached by a country under attack laying down its arms she said her voice trembling with emotion This would not be peace but occupationMatviichuk repeated her earlier call for Putin and Belarus authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko who provided his countrys territory for Russian troops to invade Ukraine to face an international tribunalWe have to prove that the rule of law does work and justice does exist even if they are delayed she saidMatviichuk was named a cowinner of the 2022 peace prize in October along with Russian human rights group Memorial and Ales Bialiatski head of the Belarusian rights group Viasna Later on Saturday the other Nobel prizes will be formally presented during a ceremony in StockholmBialiatski who is jailed in Belarus pending his trial and faces a prison sentence of up to 12 years wasnt allowed to send his speech He shared a few thoughts when he met in jail with his wife Natallia Pinchuk who spoke on his behalf at the award ceremonyIn my homeland the entirety of Belarus is in a prison Bialiatski said in the remarks delivered by Pinchuk in reference to a sweeping crackdown on the opposition after massive protests against an August 2020 fraudtainted vote that Lukashenko used to extend his rule This award belongs to all my human rights defender friends all civic activists tens of thousands of Belarusians who have gone through beatings torture arrests prisonAlso Read Time magazine names Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky Person of the YearBialiatski is the fourth person in the 121year history of the Nobel Prizes to receive the award while in prison or detentionIn the remarks delivered by his wife he cast Lukashenko as a tool of Putin saying the Russian leader is seeking to establish his domination across the exSoviet landsI know exactly what kind of Ukraine would suit Russia and Putin a dependent dictatorship he said The same as todays Belarus where the voice of the oppressed people is ignored and disregardedThe triple peace prize award was seen as a strong rebuke to Putin not only for his action in Ukraine but for the Kremlins crackdown on domestic opposition and its support for Lukashenkos brutal repression of dissentersRussias Supreme Court shut down Memorial one of Russias oldest and most prominent human rights organizations that was widely acclaimed for its studies of political repression in the Soviet Union in December 2021Prior to that the Russian government had declared the organization a foreign agent a label that implies additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations that can discredit the targeted organizationYan Rachinsky of Memorial said in his speech that todays sad state of civil society in Russia is a direct consequence of its unresolved pastHe particularly denounced the Kremlins attempts to denigrate the history statehood and independence of Ukraine and other exSoviet nations saying that it became the ideological justification for the insane and criminal war of aggression against UkraineOne of the first victims of this madness was the historical memory of Russia itself Rachinsky said Now the Russian mass media refer to the unprovoked armed invasion of a neighboring country the annexation of territories terror against civilians in the occupied areas and war crimes as justified by the need to fight fascismWhile all the winners spoke in unison to condemn the war in Ukraine there also were some marked differencesMatviichuk specifically declared that the Russian people will be responsible for this disgraceful page of their history and their desire to forcefully restore the former empireRachinsky described the Russian aggression against its neighbor as a monstrous burden but strongly rejected the notion of national guiltIt is not worth talking about national or any other collective guilt at all the notion of collective guilt is abhorrent to fundamental human rights principles he saidThe joint work of the participants of our movement is based on a completely different ideological basis on the understanding of civic responsibility for the past and for the presentThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever