Nobel Laureate and Activist Ales Bialiatski Sentenced to 10 Years in Belarusian Prison
A Belarusian court on Friday sentenced one of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, the human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, to 10 years in prison, continuing a brutal crackdown on dissent that began in response to pro-democracy protests in 2020.
Bialiatski, 60, and at least two other Viasna activists were convicted and sentenced Friday on charges of smuggling cash into the country to finance opposition activities. Valiantsin Stefanovich, vice president of Viasna, was sentenced to nine years in jail, and Uladzimir Labkovich, the group’s lawyer, received a seven-year sentence.
The case was widely viewed as political retribution for years of opposition to Lukashenko, who has repeatedly accused his opponents and nongovernmental organizations of accepting financial backing from the West. All three of the human rights campaigners had pleaded not guilty on Friday.
Bialiatski, a veteran human rights defender, founded the Viasna Human Rights Center in 1996. He shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize with Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties, which is working to document alleged war crimes by Russia, and the Russian human rights group Memorial, in a pointed rebuke to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.
In bestowing the award in October, the Nobel Committee specifically called on Belarus to free Bialiatski, who had been arrested on charges of financial crimes widely viewed as politically motivated. His decade-long sentence marked the latest display of contempt for the West by the government of authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko, which Bialiatski had long criticized.
Bialiatski was jailed following mass street protests in 2020, which erupted after Lukashenko claimed victory in a presidential election in August 2020 with 80 percent of the vote, an outcome that was widely derided as fraudulent.
Since then, Lukashenko, who has presided over the former Soviet state with an iron fist for nearly three decades, has unleashed a shocking wave of repression against the protesters. More than 35,000 were arrested, while thousands were beaten by police. Rights groups also documented cases of torture. Many opposition figures were jailed or forced to flee and live in exile.
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the country’s opposition leader in exile who had claimed victory in the 2020 presidential election, called the sentencing of Bialiatski and his colleagues “appalling.”
“Ales has dedicated his life to fighting against tyranny. He is a true hero of Belarus and will be honored long after the dictator is forgotten,” Tikhanovskaya tweeted.
