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One of three Nobel Peace Prize winners for 2022, Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski.
Applause and debate over Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to human rights activists in a region at war. While many celebrated the work of all three in the face of authoritarianism, the shared nature of the award also stirred debate. A Russian civil rights organization, an agency investigating war crimes in Ukraine, and a Belarusian activist won the coveted award.
Jailed Belarusian Ales Bialiatski, Russian pro-rights advocate group Memorial, and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine have all undertaken difficult work at great risk to challenge authoritarianism in their countries.
“[The laureates] have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens,” said Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel committee.
Memorial, officially outlawed by Moscow last year, was dedicated to uncovering Soviet-era repression. On Friday, as it received its Nobel, the group lost a court battle against the Putin government when a judge ordered the state seizure of its Moscow headquarters.
Bialiatski, meanwhile, founded the human rights center Viasna in Belarus and has fought for civil liberties for decades. Detained without trial since last summer, Bialiatski reportedly faces up to 12 years in jail if convicted.
Finally, the Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv dates back to 2007, when it was set up to promote human and democratic rights in Ukraine. Since February, it has documented alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
While many hailed the work of all three and the Nobel committee’s choice, some were frustrated by the decision to bunch the Ukrainian group together with the winners from Russia and Belarus, the two countries that coordinated to attack Ukraine seven and a half months ago.
Maria Ressa, the CEO of online news platform Rappler, speaks to the media after posting bail at a Manila Regional Trial Court in Manila City.
Maria Ressa: Fearless and fair
The last time I saw my former boss Maria Ressa, about three years ago in New York, she wasn't worried about being arrested upon her return to the Philippines. Her friends and family had told her to consider staying in America, as she's a dual citizen after growing up in New Jersey. But she thought it was her duty to go back to Manila and continue doing her job as CEO of independent news site Rappler.
She wasn't arrested that time for her role in Rappler updating an old article deemed by a judge to be retroactively libelous. But she was detained in February 2019 over the same charge, and again a month later for allegedly violating a ban on foreign ownership of the media. Maria got out on bail both times, but that wasn't the end of her legal troubles.
In June 2020, she was convicted of cyber-libel, and now faces up to 100 years in prison under a very loose and retroactive interpretation of the law that's been panned as an attack on press freedom.
For years, Maria has been fighting dozens of court cases designed to silence her and Rappler for exposing the truth about President Rodrigo Duterte's bloody war on drugs and corruption within the administration. She almost always prevails, but it costs her and Rappler energy, time, and money — not to mention personal sacrifice.
The thing is, she does have almost limitless energy. When I worked at Rappler a decade ago, we jokingly referred to Maria as being like the Energizer Bunny in the old TV commercials. No matter how tough a day had been, she'd always be at her tiny desk, chatting with her trusted top editor Glenda Gloria, typing furiously on her laptop, or talking to a source on the phone, and running on her usual diet of pandesal and diet Coke.
She's always smiling. And laughing, especially when she lets her guard down a bit at Rappler parties. But she's also tough as nails.
It takes a lot of guts to defy a dictator wannabe who's ordered his cops and soldiers to kill thousands of people. Especially when he's made it personal. After all, Duterte once claimed Maria was part of a CIA plot to oust him from power. And he still eggs on his supporters on Facebook who threaten to rape and kill her because he's weaponized social media.
More importantly, though, she's fair. Maria and Rappler gave Duterte a chance, even when it seemed a trash-talking mayor from the province didn't have a shot at the top job in Manila. But the relationship soured once the bullet-ridden bodies started piling up on the streets, with Rappler's Patricia Evangelista writing about it all.
Operating in a country long recognized for its press freedom, Rappler is doing the same to the Duterte regime that it did to his predecessor. And that it'll do to the next Philippine administration: hold it to account, and call it out when it fails to deliver or abuses its power.
"I am a cautionary tale for journalists," Maria told Ian Bremmer soon after her conviction on GZERO World. She's also an inspiration — and now a Nobel winner.
The question is now: will Duterte let her travel to Oslo to receive the prize?
What We're Watching: UK's Brexit breach, Lula mulls comeback in Brazil, Trump's Nobel nomination
UK's Brexit tweak could breach international law: Boris Johnson's government came under fire this week after signaling that it would rewrite parts of the deal negotiated with Brussels last year that set terms for the UK's exit from the European Union. That agreement allowed Northern Ireland, still part of the UK, the same trade rules and customs as the rest of the EU — a key condition of the Good Friday Agreement signed in 1998 between the UK and Republic of Ireland that ended decades of violence. The British government now says it plans to pass legislation that could upend the provision that guarantees an open Irish border. Many observers say this would breach international law, putting the Good Friday Agreement in jeopardy. In the United States, meanwhile, Democrats have warned that a future Biden administration would reject any move to create a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, and that Johnson's latest move would undermine chances of negotiating any future US-UK free trade agreement. More immediately, this maneuver also undermines the trust on which ongoing UK-EU relations will depend.
Is Lula making a comeback in Brazil? Former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva blasted the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, over the latter's botched handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Lula said that Bolsonaro has turned the pandemic into a "weapon of mass destruction," referring to the country's high COVID-19 caseload and death toll, second only to the United States. While criticisms of his pandemic response are nothing new for Bolsonaro — who consistently downplayed the severity of COVID-19, often flouting rules on mask-wearing and social distancing until he became sick himself — it is the first time that Lula has hit Bolsonaro in such a public way, causing pundits to ask whether Brazil's leftist former leader might be preparing for a 2022 runoff against the right-wing incumbent. In 2018, Lula was sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption, but a year later his conviction was overturned, although he still can't run for public office. However, questions over the impartiality of the judge (Bolsonaro's own former justice minister) could result in Lula's political rights being restored by the Supreme Court. That raises the stakes for Bolsonaro in the general election in two years, where Lula — who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010 and is still very popular, especially among the working poor — would be a formidable rival.
What We're Ignoring:
Trump tapped for Nobel Peace Prize: US President Donald Trump was nominated on Wednesday for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in brokering a recent peace deal between former foes — the United Arab Emirates and Israel. Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a far-right Norwegian politician with anti-immigrant views on par with Trump's, tapped the US president for the 2021 prize. While Trump's Nobel nod sounds auspicious, we're ignoring this development for two key reasons: Firstly, the bar for being nominated is extremely low (nominations are accepted from any politician serving at the national level). Additionally, Tybring-Gjedde, clearly a Trump fanboy, was one of two politicians who nominated the US president for the same prize in 2018 for his role in fostering "reconciliation" between North and South Korea. But relations on the Korean Peninsula are far from reconciled these days...