A Nobel boost for human rights

Opinion editor's note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.

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The worthy winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize are Ales Bialiatski, an imprisoned Belarusian activist, the shuttered Russian human-rights group Memorial, and the Center for Civil Liberties, a vital Ukrainian human-rights organization.

More profoundly, the people they represent — Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians, under siege from the repressive rule of Russian President Vladimir Putin — are worthy of a life of justice and dignity. Ideally, the Nobel recognition will help advance their cause.

"The Peace Prize laureates represent civil society in their home countries," the Norwegian Nobel Committee said Friday in a statement about the awards. "They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect fundamental rights of citizens. They have made an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human rights abuses and the abuse of power. Together they demonstrate the significance of civil society for peace and democracy."

Immorally and illegally, there are unremitting war crimes in Ukraine and abuses of human rights occurring in all three countries. That can be blamed on one country and one man: Russia and Putin, whose role in crushing internal dissent and legitimate protest in Belarus — as well as Ukrainian sovereignty — necessitates action by individuals such as Bialiatski and institutions like Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties.

However heroic and laudable these laureates are, the effort cannot stop there. Rather, the United Nations needs to investigate and prosecute war crimes unflinchingly, and nations united against Russia's invasion of Ukraine need to support that country's right to defend its sovereignty unceasingly.

The need to document war crimes becomes clearer with each Russian troop withdrawal. On Friday, it was reported that 534 civilian bodies have been discovered by Ukrainian authorities since early September in areas Russia once occupied. Among the dead were 226 women and 19 children, and 447 were found in one mass burial site. In addition, 22 suspected torture chambers have been discovered, reflecting the depravity of Russia's forces and government.

The Center for Civil Liberties is at the forefront of documenting such possible war crimes. Over the border in Russia, Memorial had tracked both modern-day abuses as well as Soviet-era repression until the Kremlin forced its closure. And in Belarus, Bialiatski, a longtime democracy activist protested the election allegedly stolen by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who turned to Putin to help quell the throngs demonstrating against Lukashenko, often called "Europe's last dictator." (Putin must qualify as Eurasia's.) Bialiatski remains jailed without charges.

"Despite his personal hardship, Mr. Bialiatski has not yielded one inch in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus," Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said in announcing the award.

The three laureates are deserving recipients, Melinda Haring, deputy director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, told an editorial writer. The awards "signals that the world knows what's going on and that the world cares deeply about the injustice that Putin has put on the former Soviet Union, the world knows about his war crimes, and the world knows that he is trying to strangle freedom."

Haring, who has worked directly with the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, added that the Peace Prize "is a huge buoy to the spirits of ordinary Ukrainians, ordinary Belarusians, and ordinary Russians who want to live a different life, and a huge encouragement to these activists who have been in the trenches."

All three laureates "are all responding to Putin and Putin's victims," Haring said. "There are millions of victims in Russia, in Ukraine, and in Belarus, and these organizations are all trying to collect information on the war crimes and the injustice that Putin has been meting out. That's the linking theme."

That theme in turn should link allies worldwide in opposing Russia's repression and pushing for a more peaceful and just world.