Motivation of the Scientific and Guarantee Committee of the Alexander Langer Foundation

Alexander Langer International Award 2023

 

Olga Karatch

 

Special mention ZMINA

 

Motivation of the Scientific and Guarantee Committee of the Alexander Langer Foundation

 

 

The Alexander Langer International Award aims to support and enhance groups and individuals who contribute through their work to keep alive the legacy of Alexander Langer’s thought and to continue his civil, cultural, and political commitment. The Foundation aims to reward individuals and associations that with courageous choices, independence of thought and strong social roots are able to illuminate emblematic situations and innovative paths to deal with the crises taking place today. In particular, the Award aims to support and enhance subjects, including little-known ones, who work for human rights and peace policies, democracy, and coexistence, against discrimination and ethnic exclusivism, the defense of the ecosystem and the search for ways for ecological conversion.

 

The Foundation’s awardees have always been characterized by generosity, courage, tenacity, and resistance to violence, and they usually act away from the spotlight of the world public. In fact, from 1997 to the present, the Foundation has given the Award with great passion to a person or association from among those who are able to offer a peaceful response to war or socially intolerable situations.

 

The Scientific and Guarantee Committee of the Alexander Langer Foundation rewards the Alexander Langer International Award 2023 to human rights activist Olga Karatch. Belarusian political scientist Olga Karatch is considered the face and driving force behind the human and civil rights network Nash Dom / Our House, which she founded in late 2005 and is currently joined by more than 20 groups across the country. The Scientific and Guarantee Committee was particularly impressed that Nash Dom focuses not on the capital city of Minsk, but on other major cities in the country. Nash Dom /Our House supports those who are not seen.

 

We believe that Belarus is a country far from the spotlight, especially at this stage in the course of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its current leader, Lukashenko, is totally in the hands of Putin, further isolating the country and its population, pushing its pace more and more towards that of an ever-harsher regime. The opposition ends badly, physically eliminated, exiled, in jail.

 

Olga Karatch is the editor of Nash Dom, which she founded in December 2002 as a self-published newspaper in Vitebsk. Olga was several times arrested and tortured by the Lukashenko regime. Since 2014, Olga Karatch has been living in exile in Vilnius, where Nash Dom in Lithuania is registered as an organization under the name International Center for Civil Initiatives. The organization, classified as terrorist by the Lukashenko regime, now coordinates many volunteer groups in about 20 Belarusian cities and in exile. The goal is to change Belarusian society through nonviolent action and to strengthen citizens’ influence on decision-making processes. Olga Karatch is seen as a threat by the Lukashenko regime. Despite this, she works tirelessly with other organizations to highlight human rights violations.

 

The Alexander Langer International Award 2023 recognizes Olga’s work against war, for women’s rights, and for democratic change in Belarus. All the esteem of the Scientific and Guarantee Committee goes to the goal of Olga Karatch and her team to transform Belarusian society by nonviolent means and by increasing the influence of citizens in government and institutional decision-making processes. Olga has never given up and continues to monitor human rights violations in cooperation with other organizations.

 

It is an honor for us, the Scientific and Guarantee Committee, to award Olga Karatch with the Alexander Langer International Award 2023 for many other merits as well. These include having participated in the International Service for Human Rights Defenders Programme in 2019. Nash Dom has had the courage to expose an atrocious game: 18,000 children aged six and up are being trained in more than 480 summer camps in which a line of military training is practiced starting with the use of weapons. These kids are “human material” taken from the peripheries, from the most degraded places. The system of military patriotic camps is in the hands of the Ministry of Defense. The alarm was spread precisely by Nash Dom, the association of Olga Karatch that is well embedded in the European nonviolence network. Nash Dom has had the merit, better still the courage to write a report on manipulation against children; and Olga with her team scrupulously monitors human rights violations in Belarus, participates in anti-war campaigns, and calls for conscientious objection to military service, in a context aggravated by programs of militarization of childhood and adolescence. Olga Karatch calls on the men of Belarus to refuse to join the military or to leave it if already in service and states that “No means no”, explicitly recalling the campaign led by feminism.

 

We believe we have summarized the reasons that convinced us to award Olga Karatch with the Alexander Langer International Award 2023. Along with the Award to Olga Karatch, the Scientific and Guarantee Committee gives a special mention to the ZMINA organization.

 

The Center for Human Rights ZMINA, a nongovernmental organization, is committed to the promotion of human rights, the defense of the rule of law and democratic values of civil society in Ukraine. ZMINA advocates for the protection of freedom of expression and movement, against discrimination, for the prevention of torture and cruel treatment, for the support of human rights and civil rights defenders in Ukraine, including Russian-occupied territory in Crimea, and for the protection of the rights of people affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ZMINA is part of a broader coalition of civil and human rights organizations and is also very active in defending the rights of ethnic and sexual minorities, such as the Tatar population and LGBTQ+ persons.

 

 

 

 

The President of the Scientific and Guarantee Committee

Elisabeth Alber

 

 

The President of the Board of Directors

Christine Stufferin

 

 

 

 

The members of the Scientific and Guarantee Committee of the Alexander Langer Foundation are Elisabeth Alber, Grazia Barbiero, Anna Brambilla, Azra Fetahović, Bettina Foa, David Hofmann, Giulia Levi, Fabiana Martini, Salvatore Saltarelli, Giovanni Scotto, Gianni Tamino, Franz Tutzer, Mao Valpiana, Nazario Zambaldi, Simone Zoppellaro.