Activists in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine Win Nobel Peace Prize

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, the Russian group Memorial, and the Ukrainian organization Center for Civil Liberties. The winners were announced Friday in Oslo by Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, the AP reports. Memorial, one of Russia's oldest and most prominent human rights groups, was shut down by an order issued by Russia's Supreme Court last December, less than two months before the invasion of Ukraine. Bialiatski, 60, helped spark the democracy movement in Belarus in the 1980s, CNBC reports. He was jailed last year on tax evasion charges widely thought to be politically motivated.

Reiss-Andersen said the judges wanted to honor ”three outstanding champions of human rights, democracy, and peaceful coexistence in the neighbor countries Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine." "Through their consistent efforts in favor of human values and anti-militarism and principles of law, this year’s laureates have revitalized and honored Alfred Nobel’s vision of peace and fraternity between nations, a vision most needed in the world today," she told reporters in Oslo. (More Nobel Peace Prize stories.)