The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one individual and two organizations. I wrote about this prize, and its recipients, in a piece several weeks ago — here. The prize was handed out on December 10, in a ceremony at Oslo City Hall. I have written two posts about this event. The first concerns Ales Bialiatski, the Belarusian democracy activist and political prisoner. The second concerns Memorial, the great (and banned) civil-society and human-rights organization in Russia.
Bialiatski and Memorial are two of the laureates, two of the prize’s recipients, as you know. The third is the Center for Civil Liberties, in Kyiv. The center’s executive director is Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian human-rights lawyer. I interviewed her in early October, a few days before the 2022 prize was announced. She was in New York, participating in a session of the Oslo Freedom Forum. For our interview, go here.
At the Nobel ceremony on Saturday, she spoke for the organization, the Center for Civil Liberties. Her lecture included the following sentence: “We are proud of having the Ukrainian language heard during the official ceremony for the first time in history.” (The Nobel prizes began in 1901.)
I would like to quote some other portions of Matviichuk’s lecture. It is very interesting, covering important ground, as this year’s other peace-prize lectures do.
Russia, says Matviichuk, “has been consistently destroying its own civil society.” And yet “the countries of the democratic world have long turned a blind eye to this. They continued to shake hands with the Russian leadership, build gas pipelines, and conduct business as usual.” Yes. Also: “For decades, Russian troops have been committing crimes in different countries. But they always got away with this.”
Every day, you will hear that it’s up to the Ukrainians to make peace with the Russians. Here is what Matviichuk has to say:
The people of Ukraine want peace more than anyone else in the world. But peace cannot be achieved by a country under attack laying down its arms. This would not be peace but occupation. After the liberation of Bucha, we found a lot of civilians murdered in the streets and in the courtyards of their homes. These people were unarmed.
The phrase “laying down its arms” makes me think of something. Bertha von Suttner, a friend of Alfred Nobel’s, won the peace prize in 1905. She was a celebrated pacifist. In 1889, she wrote a popular novel, Lay Down Your Arms!
In September of this year, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said, “One man chose this war [meaning Putin]. One man can end it. Because if Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.”
I have no doubt that Blinken had Golda Meir in mind. You recall her words: “If they lay down their arms, there will be no more war. If we lay down our arms, there will be no more Israel.”
Oleksandra Matviichuk, in her Nobel lecture, says,
We must stop pretending that deferred military threats are “political compromises.” The democratic world has grown accustomed to making concessions to dictatorships. And that is why the willingness of the Ukrainian people to resist Russian imperialism is so important. We will not leave people in the occupied territories to be killed and tortured.
Matviichuk further says just what she said to me in New York:
This is not a war between two states, it is a war of two systems — authoritarianism and democracy. We are fighting for the opportunity to build a state in which everyone’s rights are protected, authorities are accountable, courts are independent, and the police do not beat peaceful student demonstrators in the central square of the capital.
Dictators, says Matviichuk,
are afraid that the idea of freedom will prevail. This is why Russia is trying to convince the whole world that the rule of law, human rights, and democracy are fake values.
Yes. I hear this all the time: sneers at the very idea of law, rights, and democracy. This cynicism is a weapon of the authoritarians, and an important one.
One part of Matviichuk’s lecture reminds me of Andrei Sakharov. I will explain in a moment. Says Matviichuk,
War turns people into numbers. We have to reclaim the names of all the victims of war crimes. Regardless of who they are, their social status, the type of crime they have suffered, and whether the media and society are interested in their cases. Because anyone’s life is priceless.
Yelena Bonner, Sakharov’s widow, told me that Sakharov disliked talking about human rights in general. That was too abstract for people. He liked to talk about specific cases: especially political prisoners he knew personally.
Matviichuk ends her lecture as follows:
You don’t have to be Ukrainian to support Ukraine. It is enough just to be human.
Berta Valle is the wife of Félix Maradiaga, the Nicaraguan political prisoner. (I wrote about them here.) She has a slogan, more like a plea: “Be human.”
In New York, I had the feeling of having met a rare, and uncommonly good, person in Oleksandra Matviichuk. She and countless of her countrymen are going through hell. I hope that this Nobel prize is, in some respect, fortifying.