The Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin was presiding over suppression of human rights as it handed out its annual peace prize. While the committee said the prize was not a direct message to Putin, it called his government an authoritarian government that is suppressing human rights activists,” head of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen, told reporters, adding that they wanted to prize to highlight the “way civil society and human rights advocates are being suppressed.”