March 03, 2023 11:26
The criminal case was opened in January against the founders of the human rights organization Viasna, which was not recognized by the Minsk authorities
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in Belarus, Ales BialiatskiThe 60-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Minsk court for smuggling and financing “activities that seriously violate public order”. This was announced by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. The criminal case against Bialiatski and other founders of the human rights organization Viasna, which began in the mid-1980s and has not been recognized by the Belarusian authorities, began in January.
Bialiatski’s supporters see this conviction as retaliation for his human rights efforts.
With the activist, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize together with the Russian human rights NGO Memorial and the Ukrainian organization “Center for Civil Liberties” and leading figure of the democratic movement in Belarus, two other co-defendants are detained and accused: Valentin Stefanovitch and Vladimir Labkovitch, sentenced to nine and seven years imprisonment respectively.
The three spent more than a year and a half in a pre-trial detention center. Instead, Dmitry Solovyov, who fled the country, was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison. The four dissidents were accused of “smuggling at least €201,000 and $54,000” and “funding protests under the guise of human rights activities,” Novaya Gazeta reported.
The main opponent of the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, denounced a “shameful injustice”. “We must do everything we can to fight it,” he said on Twitter.
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to Ales Bialiatski
Metsola: Convicting Bialiatski as an insult in court “I am concerned about the 10-year prison sentence for Nobel Peace Prize winner and Sakharov Prize winner Ales Bialiatski,” said the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, after the Belarusian dissident’s conviction. “The politically motivated sentences against Bialiatski and other activists are an insult to justice,” Metsola added via Twitter.
“The Nobel Prize winners Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovich and Uladzimir Labkovich were sentenced to several years in prison simply because of their years of commitment to the rights, dignity and freedom of the people of Belarus. The charges and the trial were a farce.” Federal Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wrote on Twitter. “The Minsk regime is fighting civil society with violence and imprisonment. This is as much a daily disgrace as Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s war. We demand an end to political persecution and freedom for the more than 1,400 political prisoners,” Baerbock wrote again.
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