Human Rights Prize awarded to Aksana Kolb, Nasta Loyka, and Committee for Torture Investigation

Aksana Kolb, edi­tor-in-chief of the Novy Chas news­pa­per, won the award in the cat­e­go­ry “Jour­nal­ist of the Year 2022”. Vol­ha Har­buno­va, activist and for­mer head of Radisla­va NGO, received the prize in her name and passed the journalist’s words that the award was a mer­it of the entire Novy Chas team.

“Free­dom of speech can­not be put behind bars,” Aksana Kolb believes.

The Jour­nal­ist of the Year nom­i­na­tion rec­og­nizes a jour­nal­ist or blog­ger who has most active­ly and vivid­ly cov­ered human rights issues in Belarus over the past year, or whose pub­li­ca­tions, TV, or radio broad­casts had the great­est pub­lic response or influ­ence on the res­o­lu­tion of the sit­u­a­tion with human rights or fun­da­men­tal free­doms in the coun­try.

Aksana Kolb was detained on 20 April 2022 fol­low­ing a police raid on her home. She was charged with orga­niz­ing actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order and sen­tenced to 2.5 years of free­dom restric­tion. The jour­nal­ist left Belarus.

The award in the cat­e­go­ry “Defend­er of the Year 2022” was giv­en to Nas­ta Loy­ka. As not­ed by the Vias­na Human Rights Cen­ter, the win­ner defend­ed the rights of for­eign nation­als and state­less per­sons, as well as mon­i­tored the anti-extrem­ism leg­is­la­tion and prac­tice. She made a great con­tri­bu­tion to non-for­mal edu­ca­tion.

Nas­ta Loy­ka was detained in Octo­ber 2022 and put in cus­tody for orga­niz­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order.

Accord­ing to Human Con­stan­ta NGO, dur­ing her deten­tion, Nas­ta was tak­en for inter­ro­ga­tion to the Main Direc­torate of Com­bat­ing Orga­nized Crime and Cor­rup­tion where she was tased, and on 11 Novem­ber, a guard of the tem­po­rary deten­tion cen­ter made her stay in the yard with­out clothes for eight hours. As a result, the activist got seri­ous­ly ill but was refused med­ical care.

The Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee for the Inves­ti­ga­tion of Tor­ture in Belarus won the prize in the cat­e­go­ry “Human Rights Cam­paign (Ini­tia­tive) of the Year”.

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I am the only pub­lic per­son on the com­mit­tee, but I want to thank my col­leagues for their work. When the com­mit­tee was cre­at­ed in 2020, no one could imag­ine that we would work even hard­er in 2023. After all, tor­ture con­tin­ues,” Vik­to­ryia Fio­dar­a­va said at the awards cer­e­mo­ny.

The com­mit­tee was cre­at­ed in 2020 in the after­math of the 2020 elec­tions in Belarus. The orga­ni­za­tion works in com­pli­ance with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards and is a mem­ber of the Inter­na­tion­al Account­abil­i­ty Plat­form for Belarus, a coali­tion of NGOs that have joined forces to col­lect, con­sol­i­date, check and pre­serve evi­dence of gross human rights vio­la­tions, alleged­ly com­mit­ted by the Belaru­sian author­i­ties and oth­er per­sons before and fol­low­ing the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tions.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the orga­ni­za­tion are con­fi­dent that the more facts and evi­dence they man­age to col­lect, the more per­pe­tra­tors can be brought to jus­tice.