Valiantsin Stefanovich and Uladzimir Labkovich, two other Viasna activists, have also been detained for three years now, along with the Nobel Prize laureate, reports Viasna, which has been delegalized by the Alexander Lukashenko regime.
On July 14, 2021, the regime’s security services searched the homes of the three democratic dissidents for supposedly harboring “contraband” and “financing actions detrimental to public order.”
In March 2023, Bialatski was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Stefanovich and Labkovich received sentences of nine and seven years respectively. None of them plead guilty. The regime has subsequently placed them on a list of political “extremists”.
Five Viasna workers have been jailed altogether, including Marfa Rabkovich, an activist and former coordinator of volunteers for Viasna, who was arrested in 2020 and who has been detained for almost 1,400 days now.
Pavel Latushka, a former Belarusian diplomat-turned-oppositionist, whose missions included ambassadorship to Poland and France, and who now serves as the Deputy Head of the United Transitional Cabinet of Belarus led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, posted a tweet on the X social media platform calling for Bialiatski’s release on Saturday.
“Human rights fighter [and Nobel Prize] laureate Ales Bialiatski must be released due to his deteriorating health.”
.
“Tomorrow marks 3 years since the Lukashenko regime arrested him. [Ales Bialiatski] lacks proper access to lawyers and family, and his health is worsening. The prison administration refuses to accept medicine parcels from his family,” Latushka further wrote, adding that Bialiatski has been detained for defending human rights in Belarus and calling for the Lukashenko regime to be held accountable through sanctions and international arrest warrants against those responsible for political repression in Belarus.
The information about the medication for Bialiatski that his family has been sending to the penal colony where he is detained and is being returned to them has been recently released to the media by the dissident’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk.
Latushka was seconded by Tsikhanouskaya, who tweeted that:
“As Ales serves his terrible and unfair 10-year sentence, I want to remind you that he founded the [Viasna] human rights center in 1996 and dedicated his life to defending Belarusians from the unjust and undemocratic actions of Lukashenka's regime. He continued through the official closing of Viasna and a politically motivated case in 2011, which led to him spending 3 years in prison”
“But it never stopped him. And I am sure it will not stop him now. Let's continue standing for Ales Bialiatski, all imprisoned human rights defenders [freeing Viasna activists], and all political prisoners in Belarus,” the Belarusian opposition leader wrote.
Political prisoners in Belarus
Ales Bialiatski is arguably the best-known Belarusian human rights defender and the founder of the Viasna human rights center. This is the second time he is serving a sentence as a political prisoner in Belarus. The total number of political prisoners in Belarus currently exceeds 1,400.
Political prisoners in Belarus are held in inhumane conditions that human rights defenders classify as torture. The prisoners are stripped of their basic human rights, such as access to medication and the possibility to maintain contact with their loved ones. Many of them are kept in protracted solitary confinement, completely devoid of outside stimuli. At least six people have died in Belarusian prisons since 2020.
Bialiatski was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, but it has not in the least improved his situation.
His wife said that he was previously held in solitary confinement and is now forced to perform hard labor in a penal colony. He is oftentimes punished for the slightest perceived infractions and is going through “all the circles of hell that thousands of Belarusian political prisoners go through in prison.”
