Minsk court convicts Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in absentia of treason and conspiracy to seize power.
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after being convicted in absentia of treason and conspiracy to seize power, a sentence she says was punishment for her efforts to promote democracy.
Tsikhanouskaya, 40, a former English teacher, fled to neighboring Lithuania in 2020 after running against incumbent Alexander Lukashenko in a presidential election whose official results showed Lukashenko won by a landslide victory.
She and the opposition said at the time the results had been rigged to give Lukashenko the win. Anger at the official results sparked widespread protests.
Lukashenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, brutally cracked down on protesters and accused the opposition of plotting to overthrow the government. Key opposition figures and activists were arrested and some fled the country.
Lukashenko has ruled Belarus for almost 30 years. During the mass protests, his government arrested more than 35,000 people.
The authorities tried Tsikhanouskaya, the de facto leader of the opposition, in absentia in January, accusing her and other opposition figures of unconstitutional attempts to seize power.
The state news agency Belta said a court in Minsk sentenced Tsikhanouskaya to 15 years in prison on Monday.
The same court handed down an 18-year prison term to Pavel Latushko, a prominent member of the Belarusian opposition council, and a 12-year prison term to three other activists convicted of involvement in the same conspiracy, Belta reported.
They all left Belarus after protests broke out in August 2020.
“15 years in prison. This is how the regime ‘rewards’ my work for democratic changes in Belarus,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote on Twitter.
“But today I’m not thinking about my own punishment,” she said. “I think of the thousands of innocent people who have been arrested and sentenced to real prison terms. I will not stop until every one of them is released.”
“A Big KGB”
Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press that her court-appointed lawyer did not contact her once during the trial and did not respond to her request to see the files.
She accused them that the law and the judicial system in Belarus no longer worked and the state had “turned into a big KGB”.
“The regime is taking revenge on me and all Belarusians — taking revenge for the fact that we chose freedom in 2020, for not stepping down, for not giving up, but for continuing to fight,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
“If Lukashenko could have, he would have locked everyone up,” she added.
In addition to the jail term, Tsikhanouskaya was ordered to pay a fine of approximately $11,000.
Tsikhanouskaya was sentenced by a Minsk court to 10 years in prison days after the sentencing of Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights activist Ales Bialiatski in what the West condemned as a “sham” trial.
Rights activists estimate that there are about 1,500 people in prison in Belarus on politically motivated charges.