Nobel peace prize winner jailed over Belarus protests

ALES BIALIATSKI, a Nobel peace prize winner who has fought Belarus’s authoritarian government for nearly 30 years, was jailed for 10 years yesterday.

The 60-year-old founded Viasna, its most prominent human rights group, soon after Alexander Lukashenko became the first president of the former Soviet state in 1994.

He was held with others in 2021 after demonstrations against Mr Lukashenko and the crackdowns that followed, during which many government critics were either jailed or forced into exile.

Yesterday he was found guilty of smuggling and financing activities that “violate public order”, a thinly veiled pretext to silence him. Describing the “cruel trial” as a “sham”, his wife, Natalya Pinchuk, said the verdict was a warning to defenders of human rights.