Nobel laureate from Belarus sentenced to 10 years in prison

Bialiatski had been held without trial since 2020. Two of Bialiatski’s allies were also convicted. They have to go to prison for seven and nine years. The trio denied guilt in a hearing last year. According to Viasna, the men were accused of smuggling money into Belarus to finance the opposition.

Bialiatski’s organization provided legal and financial support to Belarusians who took part in mass anti-government protests in Minsk after the 2020 presidential election.

Fraud

President Alexander Lukashenko had claimed victory in the election, but the opposition and the international community said it was a fraud. Demonstrations were violently suppressed.

Opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaja, who fled to Lithuania, who claimed election victory in 2020, speaks of a “fake trial” against the three. “We must do everything to fight this shameful injustice and free them,” she wrote on social media. Fourteen years have been claimed against Tikhanovskaïa in Belarus for, among other things, high treason and the creation and direction of an extremist organization.

prisoner of conscience

Bialiatski was also arrested in 2011. He served four and a half years in prison for tax evasion. Amnesty International then declared him a prisoner of conscience. It is someone who is imprisoned because he or she is different or thinks differently from what the authorities consider correct, or because he or she belongs to a certain group.

Lukashenko came to power in Belarus almost thirty years ago. He is also called the last dictator of Europe. According to human rights organisations, Belarus has around 1,500 political prisoners. Many people have been detained since the 2020 presidential election.

democratic movement

Bialiatski won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, along with the Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties. He was hailed by the jury as one of the initiators of the democratic movement which began in Belarus in the 1980s.