Nobel laureate calls for arms to liberate Ukraine

Stockholm:

In an unusual move for a Nobel laureate, the head of one of this year’s prize-winning organizations on Monday called for arms to help Ukraine defend itself and stop the atrocities.

“If someone asks me how to stop these long-standing crimes in occupied territories, all I can say is ‘Give Ukraine weapons to liberate these territories,'” said Oleksandra Matviichuk, a human rights lawyer who heads the Kiev-based Center for Civil Liberties, told AFP in Stockholm.

“It’s a weird situation for me, and a clear sign (that) something is wrong with the entire international system when a human rights lawyer asks for air defense systems.”

But, she said, “we must prevent further damage to critical civilian infrastructure”.

“We need air defense systems. We need other types of military facilities that can help us protect our skies.”

Matviichuk said international law – its usual weapon for defending human rights – was no longer effective.

“Now I have no legal instrument that can stop Russian atrocities, because Russia publicly ignores international law and all decisions of international organizations,” said the 39-year-old.

Ukraine also needs urgent humanitarian assistance to “get through this very harsh winter,” she said, noting that she had just been without power or heating in her home in Kiev for more than three days.

The Center for Civil Liberties was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Belarusian human rights lawyer Ales Bialiatski and the Russian human rights organization Memorial for their “outstanding efforts to document war crimes, human rights violations and abuses of power”.

For whom?

Matviichuk said her organization, which was founded in 2007, now pursues an “ambitious goal of documenting every war crime” committed across Ukraine.

“Now we have a database of more than 24,000 episodes of war crimes,” she said.

The work is tough, she said, both in terms of the effort required to collect information in the war-torn country and the toll it takes on personnel.

“We document human pain and it’s very difficult,” explains Matviichuk.

She also lamented what she called a “accountability gap”, with the national justice system overburdened and the International Criminal Court only investigating “selected cases”.

“One question I ask myself (is) ‘Who are we documenting all these war crimes for?'” Matviichuk said.

“Who gives hundreds of thousands of victims of war crimes a chance for justice?” she said, emphasizing that her question was not rhetorical.

Matviichuk said that “the war turned people into numbers” as the scale of the atrocities became overwhelming.

“We have to give people their names back, and only justice can do that,” Matviichuk said.

The Peace Prize will be awarded at a formal ceremony in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death in 1896 of the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor and philanthropist Alfred Nobel.

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