Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian winners have in common their commitment to human rights and their refusal of the imperialist vision of the Kremlin.
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On October 7, 2006, Vladimir Putin’s anniversary, journalist Anna Politkovskaïa was murdered in the stairwell of her building. If the investigation of Russian justice has never taken the trouble to go back to the sponsors, the observers have always considered that the date chosen for this murder was in no way chance.
Sixteen years later, that chosen for the award of the Nobel Peace Prize, on October 7, 2022, is certainly more fortuitous. Nevertheless, the charts also constitute a message to the address of Mr. Putin, who celebrated his 70th birthday that day.
The award of the prize to human rights defenders from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine sounds like a challenge to the Russian president, or at least to the imperialist conceptions that are dear to him. The Russian NGO Memorial, the Belarusian opponent Ales Bialiatski and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties fight, each in their own way, both the authoritarianism and the fantasized vision of a necessary political unity of the three Slavic neighbors.
In the minds of the Russians as foreigners, few organizations are also immediately associated with – modest and dying – Russian civil society as Memorial. It is also for this reason that the power of Vladimir Putin continued to persecute it, until the dissolution of the organization decided by the justice in December 2021. The press conference convened on October 6 in the Corridors of the Tverskoi court, where the NGO tries to save part of its premises and its archives, had everything from an involuntary foot of nose.
a legacy of the Maidan revolution
Another symbolic defeat on Friday, the UN Human Rights Council for the first time established a mandate as a special rapporteur responsible for monitoring the human rights situation in Russia. Seventeen countries voted in favor of such a resolution, introduced by European states, when twenty-four abstained and six voted against, including China.
With regard to the other two winners, it would be insulting them to reduce them to the Russian context. Many voices rose to Ukraine on Friday to complain about seeing their country once again assigned to a destiny that would only be post-Soviet. “The Nobel Committee has an interesting understanding of” peace “if representatives of two countries having attacked a third all receive the Nobel Prize together,” also castigated on Twitter Mikhaïlo Podoliak, adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
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