Belarus sentences Nobel laureate to 10 years in prison
A court on Friday sentenced Belarus’ top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to 10 years in prison, the latest move in a years-long crackdown on dissent that has engulfed the exSoviet nation since 2020.
The harsh punishment of Ales Bialiatski and three of his colleagues was delivered in response to massive protests over a 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a new term in office.
Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has ruled the ex-Soviet country with an iron fist since 1994. More than 35,000 people were arrested, and thousands were beaten by police amid the protests, the largest ever held in the country.
Belarus is an outlier in its support of the year-old Russian invasion, with other countries in the region not backing Moscow publicly.
Bialiatski and his colleagues at the human rights centre he founded were convicted of financing actions violating public order and smuggling, the centre reported Friday.
Valiantsin Stefanovich was given a nine-year sentence, Uladzimir Labkovicz seven years and Dzmitry Salauyou was sentenced to eight years in prison in absentia. They have spent a year and nine months behind bars since the arrest.
All four activists have maintained their innocence, the Human Rights Center Viasna said after the verdict. Viasna is Belarusian for “spring.”
In his final address to court, Bialiatski urged authorities to “stop the civil war in Belarus.” He said it became obvious to him from the case files “the investigators were fulfilling the task they were given: to deprive Viasna human rights advocates of freedom at any cost, destroy Viasna and stop our work.”