The director of the Human Rights Center of the NGO Memorial, Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 with the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and the Belarusian activist, Ales Bialiatski, welcomes a reaction to “Eastern countries from Europe in danger “.
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Alexandre Cherkassov was in Tbilissi, Georgia, for the inauguration of an exhibition on Stalin camps, when he learned the news. For Le Monde, he reacts and underlines that the “fight continues for refugees, prisoners, war crimes”.
Memorial was classified agent from abroad in 2014, accused of “high Betrayal “in 2015, dissolved in December 2021 and, today, your NGO receives the Nobel Peace Prize… What is your reaction?
I was very surprised when I learned the news! For several years, we have been in the list of winners from expected and this time, when there was no sign, we are awarded the price … It is all the more unexpected than, not later than yesterday, I was chatting on the phone with Oleksandra Matviichuk [Manager of the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties], and that this NGO received it too! It is a very, very good news. While, at the same time, the Moscow court continues the trial to confiscate the Memorial building in Moscow …
This price, actually shared with three, between a Belarusian activist and two Russian and Ukrainian NGOs , is it above all a message sent to Vladimir Putin?
Everyone talks about a gift for Putin’s birthday today. But on October 7, this is not his birthday, it is the date of execution of Anna Politkovskaïa [the journalist was murdered in 2006, the day of 54 e anniversary of Vladimir Putin ]. This price is for those who survived and those who could not. And the fact that it is awarded to three is a beautiful symbol of solidarity.
It means that human rights do not know borders, that we must continue to fight for refugees, prisoners, war crimes and against humanity. It is the reaction of Europe and the world for these countries in eastern Europe in danger, while almost nothing has been done to prevent this war and the transformation of these [Russian and Belarusian] regimes] In dictatorships.
Before co-founding Memorial in 1989, Andrei Sakharov himself obtained the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975…
Yes. The Nobel Prize has not preserved it from the arrest or relegation to Gorki, any more than it spared Soljenitsyne [Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970] of the banishment … but it is a very symbolic gesture, very important.
What has become of Memorial since Russian justice has pronounced its dissolution? How do you continue your work in current circumstances?
At the time of the announcement of the Nobel Prize, we opened today, at 2 p.m., an exhibition in Tbilisi on the letters of the Fathers locked up in the Stalin camps to their children. We must show this connection between generations, keep it to understand history and preserve the future. All this year, we also continued our investigation work on the crimes committed by the Wagner group in Syria, in particular on the case of a burned Syrian citizen, beheaded, in 2017, by Russian mercenaries who did not even mask their Faces on videos. We brought the case before the military authorities in Russia, before the courts and, each time, we were told that there was no evidence. We have therefore just sent this file to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. The work continues. This is Memorial’s mission.