- Belarusian Nobel laureate sentenced to imprisonment for 10 years.
- Appeal is being made by opposition to release the prisoners and Ales considering their work.
On Friday, Ales Bialiatski winner of Nobel Peace Prize laureate was sentenced to 10 years in a maximum-security penal colony by a Minsk court. TASS news agency from Russia reports that he was found guilty on the charges of smuggling.
Bialiatski has been called as a pillar of human rights movement in Eastern Europe and has been recognised as pro-democracy activist.
Sentencing of Bialiatski along with other activist has proven to be a slam on opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
“We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice & free them,” she wrote on Twitter.
”The Minsk regime is fighting civil society with violence and imprisonment,” Baerbock said, adding ”this is as much a daily disgrace as Lukashenko’s support for Putin’s war (in Ukraine).”
Bialiatski is a founder of organization Viasna or Spring, in 1996. He as a pro-democracy activist has documented human rights abuses in Belarus since 1980s. He founded the organisation after consolidation of Russian ally and president powers, President Alexander Lukashenko.
He was arrested in 2020 for protest against Lukashenko’s regime and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 from Russia and Ukraine.
The new laureates were honored for “an outstanding effort to document war crimes, human right abuses and the abuse of power” in their respective countries. “They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said at the time.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya congratulated Bialiatski and said that the prize was important and that the prisoners must be released without delay. She wrote in a tweet three years ago.
