By YURAS KARMANAU (Associated Press)
TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — A courtroom on Friday sentenced Belarus’ high human rights advocate and one of many winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize to 10 years in jail, the most recent transfer in a yearslong crackdown on dissent that has engulfed the ex-Soviet nation since 2020.
The harsh punishment of Ales Bialiatski and three of his colleagues was delivered in response to large protests over a 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a brand new time period in workplace.
Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who backed Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, has dominated the ex-Soviet nation with an iron fist since 1994. More than 35,000 individuals had been arrested, and hundreds had been overwhelmed by police amid the protests, the most important ever held within the nation.
Belarus is an outlier in its assist of the year-old Russian invasion, with different nations within the area not backing Moscow publicly.
Bialiatski and his colleagues on the human rights heart he based had been convicted of financing actions violating public order and smuggling, the middle reported Friday.
Valiantsin Stefanovich was given a nine-year sentence; Uladzimir Labkovicz seven years; and Dzmitry Salauyou was sentenced in absentia to eight years in jail.
During the trial, which passed off behind closed doorways, the 60-year-old Bialiatski and his colleagues had been held in a caged enclosure within the courtroom. They have spent a 12 months and 9 months behind bars since their arrest.
In the pictures from the courtroom launched Friday by Belarus’ state information company Belta, Bialiatksi, clad in black garments, appeared wan, however calm.
All 4 activists have maintained their innocence, the Human Rights Center Viasna mentioned after the decision. Viasna is Belarusian for “spring.”
In his ultimate tackle to the courtroom, Bialiatski urged the authorities to “stop the civil war in Belarus.” He mentioned it grew to become apparent to him from the case recordsdata that “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.”
Exiled Belarusian opposition chief Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya referred to as the decision “appalling.”
“We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice (and) free them,” Tsikhanouskaya tweeted Friday.
Memorial, the distinguished Russian human rights group that shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize with Bialiatski and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, in an internet assertion denounced the decision as “an undisguised lawless reprisal for their human rights activities as part of a campaign of terror against civil society and the entire people of Belarus.”
Oleg Orlov, co-chair of Memorial, tried to fly to Minsk to assist Bialiatski on Friday, however was prevented from boarding the flight, with airline representatives telling him Belarus had barred him from coming into the nation. “Crimes are better committed without witnesses,” Orlov remarked.
Volodymyr Yavorsky from the Center for Civil Liberties advised The Associated Press that Ukrainian human rights advocates categorical solidarity with Bialiatski and demand his launch.
“This verdict shows that the highest level of repression in Europe is in Belarus,” Yavorsky mentioned. “Ukraine is currently resisting the very totalitarian model that the Kremlin tries to impose on the entire former Soviet space.”
The punishment additionally elicited outrage within the West.
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee, a nongovernmental human rights group, mentioned that it was “shocked by the cynicism behind the sentences.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock labeled the trial and sentencing “a farce.”
“This is just as much a daily disgrace as Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s war,” Baerbock tweeted Friday. “We call for the end of political persecution and freedom for the more than 1,400 political prisoners.”
Condemnations of the decision additionally got here from the Council of Europe rights watchdog and the U.N. Human Rights spokesperson.
Bialiatski is the fourth individual within the 121-year historical past of the Nobel Prizes to obtain the award whereas in jail or detention.
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Associated Press writers Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark; Geir Moulson in Berlin; Lorne Cook in Brussels and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”