On 9 October the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.” From 1 September 2008 to 31 August 2014 she was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. After the Square on 19 December 2010, her office kept a record of what was happening in Belarus. On 12 October Viasna gathered those statements.
The Committee recalls who she was before that post and after it: a judge of the High Court of South Africa, of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and of the International Criminal Court, then chair of a UN commission of inquiry, and now a judge ad hoc of the International Court of Justice in The Gambia’s case against Myanmar. The General Assembly approved her appointment as High Commissioner on 28 July 2008.
December 2010
Right after the dispersal of the demonstration in Minsk, Pillay condemned force used against people who had not taken part in aggression, violence against and the abduction of candidates and their supporters, the detention of activists and human rights defenders, searches, and the pursuit of independent organisations. She demanded the release of those detained without guilt. Viasna quotes her this way; in those same days the BBC Russian service carried the statement too.
Sentences, lawyers, the Viasna office
In February 2011 she answered the first trials, including the harsh sentence on Vasily Parfyonkov. Viasna’s note does not give the length of that term. Pillay said people were being imprisoned for assembly and for speech, that a prosecutor extended detention without a court, and that lawyers were intimidated and stripped of their licences for defending the opposition.
“Human rights defenders must be able to do their work in a safe environment, without risk to themselves and without fear of reprisals.”
In May 2011 in Oslo she met the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. A few hours before the conversation, Viasna writes, security officers entered Viasna’s office under the cover of a search for explosives and detained human rights defenders and foreign observers who were preparing a report on 19 December. The Committee asked her to come to Minsk soon and raised a Special Rapporteur: Belarus was then the only European country outside the Council of Europe.
Bialiatski and foreign money
On 20 September 2011, at the 18th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Pillay said that what her office had gathered on election day and after it showed serious violations: association, assembly, conscience, speech, a fair trial. She demanded the immediate and unconditional release of political prisoners, an investigation of torture, and an end to pressure on civil society. Separately, the arrest of Viasna’s chair, Ales Bialiatski, as persecution for human rights work. Human Rights Watch dates that arrest to 4 August 2011. Official Minsk, according to her report, was not answering requests to admit a UN technical mission.
In April 2012 she spoke against amendments to the Criminal Code adopted in October 2011: criminal liability for foreign grants. Freedom of association, she said, is a condition of life for organisations, and a ban on the money would cut the most exposed people off from help.
“Cooperation with civil society is not a sign of weakness.”
The Special Rapporteur
At the 20th session, in June and July 2012, she delivered a report covering December 2010 to March 2012. The authorities, in her account, had tightened control of the media and the internet and were pressing the Belarusian Helsinki Committee and independent journalists, among them Andrei Poczobut. She welcomed the release of Andrei Sannikov and Dmitry Bondarenko and at once demanded that the rest be freed without conditions and have their civil and political rights restored.
On 5 July 2012 the Council adopted resolution 20/13 and created a Special Rapporteur on Belarus. The mandate has been renewed since. Since 1 November 2024 it has been held by Nils Muižnieks.
What Bialiatski said
On the day of the prize, 9 October, Ales Bialiatski called the award a signal in support of her personally and of those who work for international justice. In his words as Viasna wrote them down there is also an inexact title: “special representative” and “the first judge of the Supreme Court.” The Nobel Committee says it more precisely: a judge of the High Court of South Africa, and High Commissioner.