In 2022, Ales Bialiatski was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, along with two other human rights organisations: Memorial (Russia) and Centre for Civil Liberties (Ukraine).
In 2020, Ales Bialiatski and the Human Rights Centre Viasna jointly received the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the “Alternative Nobel Prize,” for their role in fighting for democracy and human rights in Belarus.
In 2014, Ales Bialiatski was nominated as a finalist for the 2014 Front Line Defenders Award for Human Rights Defenders at Risk.
Ales Bialiatski is the recipient of the 2014 Civil Rights Defender of the Year Award.
Imprisoned Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialiatski was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize. The prize was established in 2013 year by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) and aims to “encourage and place the spotlight on those who commit themselves to human rights” according to the President of the PACE Jean-Claude Mignon.
I am free, but we must remember, that there are political prisoners in the country. As long as there are political prisoners in Belarus, there can be no serious talk about improving relations.
Ales Bialiatski is the chairperson of the Human Rights Centre Viasna (HRC Viasna) and Vice President of FIDH. He founded HRC Viasna in 1996 during the mass protests of the pro-democratic opposition in Belarus to help the arrested rally participants and their families, and is considered to be one of the most prominent Belarusian human rights defenders. Ales Bialiatski has been imprisoned twice. Firstly, on 24 November 2011, he was sentenced to four and a half years of strict regime detention and confiscation of his property, charged with tax evasion. On 21 June 2014, Ales Bialiatski was released on amnesty after having spent almost 3 years in prison. In 2021, following mass protests over widely disputed elections the previous year, Ales Bialiatski was arrested, and on 3 March 2023 he was sentenced in Minsk to ten years in prison for “cash smuggling” as well as “financing actions and groups that grossly violated public order.”
After the wave of violence that followed the presidential election of December 2010, the human rights situation in Belarus deteriorated rapidly and remains poor after the crackdown. Human rights defenders (HRDs) are subjected to intimidation and harassment, including judicial harassment, restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly, movement, arbitrary detention and ill-treatment.
