More than two years after the obviously rigged presidential election in Belarus, dictator Lukashenko continues to take revenge on his opponents. Human rights activists now count 1,340 political prisoners. Twelve of them are now being put in tiny cages in a court and sentenced to absurdly high prison terms.
In Belarus, twelve opposition activists have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms in connection with the protest movement in 2020 on charges of "terrorism" and high treason. Nikolai Avtukhovich, the alleged leader of the group, has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, human rights organization Vyazna said.
The sentence is one of the harshest imposed by the authoritarian leadership in the largely closed country in recent times. According to Vyazna, Avtukhovich was accused of, among other things, "terrorist" acts, the preparation of a "terrorist" act by an organized gang, an attempted coup and treason.
Of the other eleven defendants, nine were sentenced to 15 to 20 years in prison, one to six years and one month and one to two and a half years. Investigators accused the group of setting fire to a car and the house of a police officer in Grodno, western Belarus, in October 2020, then blowing up another's car and planning further attacks. The activists denied the allegations.
Opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya described the verdict as "shameful". "All political prisoners will be free when the dictator is gone. And it won't be 25 years," Tichanovskaya wrote on Twitter. She also shared pictures from the court hearing. One of them shows the accused sitting in small cages.
After the obviously falsified presidential election in August 2020, the Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko was confronted with an unprecedented protest movement. For weeks, tens of thousands of people took to the streets and demanded his resignation. The Belarusian authorities accused the West of being behind the protests. They crushed the protest movement, arrested thousands of people and forced others into exile, including Tichanovskaya.
Numerous other members of the opposition were charged and arrested in connection with terrorism allegations. The head of Vyazna, Ales Byalyatsky, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a few days ago, is currently in prison in Belarus.
Vyazna is one of the most important non-governmental organizations in Belarus. She documents human rights violations, observes elections and plays an important role in the country's democracy movement. The NGO assumes that there are currently 1,340 political prisoners in Belarus.
