Rights defenders honored at Nobel Peace Prize ceremony

KIEV, Ukraine — In an impassioned speech after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize on Saturday, the Ukrainian laureate took the opportunity to make an incongruous but powerful point: At this moment of history, she said the only way to ensure democracy, human rights and lasting peace in Ukraine is to fight. said Oleksandra Matviychuk, who accepted the award on behalf of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine, which she heads. “But peace cannot be achieved by an attacked country laying down its arms. It would not be peace, but occupation."

The other two winners - Memorial, a Russian human rights research and advocacy organization, and Ales Bialiatski, an imprisoned Belarusian activist - also became symbols of resistance and responsibility in Europe's biggest ground war since World War II, sparked by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. p>

Memorial is known for its efforts to uncover Soviet-era crimes, but Jan Rachinsky, its president, who accepted the Memorial award, said his organization was doing more than researching and documenting the tragedies of the past, extending its efforts to “acute social conflicts of the present.”

"What we consider to be the root cause of these crimes , it is the sanctification of the Russian state as the supreme value," he said in his speech. "This requires that the absolute priority of power be to serve the 'interests of the state', over the interests of individual human beings, as well as their freedom, dignity and rights."

This "inverted system of values", he said, "prevailed in the Soviet Union for 70 years and, unfortunately, continues until today".

"One of the obvious effects of the sanctification of the state has been the rise of imperial ambitions," he said. It also allows "impunity, not only for those who make criminal political decisions, but also for those who commit crimes in the execution of these decisions".

"We saw this in the hostilities in Chechnya , and we see this happening again today in the occupied territory of Ukraine,” he said. "Unfortunately, Russian society did not have the strength to break the tradition of state violence."

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