The head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,

Berit Reiss-Andersson,

met the wife of this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ales Bialiatski ,

Natalya Pinchuk

with flowers in Oslo.

On December 10, in the Norwegian capital, Natalya Pinchuk will take part in the ceremony of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to her husband, the head of the Viasna Human Rights Center "Viasna", Ales Bialiatskyi.

Ales Bialiatski was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.

This year, on October 7, it became known that Ales Bialiatsky became a laureate of the award together with the Ukrainian "Civil Liberties Center" and the Russian human rights organization "Memorial".

Who is Ales Bialiatski

Belarusian human rights defender, public figure, literary critic.

The founder and head of the human rights center "Viasna", a political prisoner.

  • He was born on September 25, 1962 in the urban settlement of Vartsil in the Karelian ASSR, where his Belarusian parents worked at the time.

    In 1965, the family returned to Belarus, to Svetlagorsk.

  • In 1984, Ales graduated from the Faculty of History and Philology of the Gomel University, worked as a teacher in the Lelchytsky District.

  • He served in the Soviet army in the Sverdlovsk region of the Russian Federation as a mechanic-driver of an armored tractor.

  • In 1986–1989, he was the founder of the Association of Young Writers "Tuteyshiya".

  • In 1989, he graduated from the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus.

  • From 1989 to 1998, he worked as the director of the Maxim Bogdanovich Literary Museum.

  • In 1991–1996, he was a deputy of the Minsk City Council of Deputies.

  • In 1996, he founded the human rights organization "Viasna"

  • On August 4, 2011, he was detained - he was accused of "tax evasion".

    On November 23, he was sentenced to 4.5 years of imprisonment in a penal colony with confiscation of property.

  • In 2012, the Radio Svaboda Library published Valer Kalinowski's book "The Bialiatski Affair".

  • On June 21, 2014, he was released early from the Bobrui colony.

  • During his 25 years of activity, he was awarded numerous prizes and awards: the Swedish Per Anger Prize, the Andrei Sakharov Freedom Prize, the Homo Homini Prize, presented by Vaclav Havel, the Norwegian Writers' Union Prize "For Freedom of Speech", the US State Department Prize, the Lech Walesa Prize , the Petra Kelly Award, the Vaclav Havel Award from PARE, the "For Human Rights and the Rule of Law" award, and others.

  • He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times.

  • Ales is the author of the books "Jogs along the shore of Lake Geneva", "Enlightened by Belarus", "Cold wing of the homeland", "Mercury silver of life", "Fight with yourself", "Prison notebooks" (Minsk, 2018, "Spring").

  • On July 14, 2021, he was detained on a criminal charge, his home and the Viasna office were searched.

  • Now he is in pre-trial detention center No. 1 - on "Voladarka" - together with his colleagues: human rights defenders Valyantsin Stefanovych and Vladimir Labkovich.

  • In total, he was prosecuted more than 20 times for his active social and human rights activities.

    Recognized as a political prisoner.

  • On October 7, 2022, Ales Bialiatsky was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.