activist Ales Bialiatski, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, sentenced to 10 years in prison

He is a key figure in the democratic movement in Belarus. Activist Ales Bialiatski, co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a court in Minsk, the NGO Viasna announced on Friday March 3. This heavy sentence is part of a new series of trials targeting activists, journalists and opponents, repressed since the protest movement in the summer of 2020.

The NGO adds that two collaborators of Ales Bialiatski, arrested like him in July 2021 and tried alongside him, Valentin Stefanovitch and Vladimir Labkovitch, were sentenced to nine and seven years in prison respectively. A fourth defendant, Dmitri Soloviev, tried in absentia after fleeing to Poland, received an eight-year prison sentence. They were also all fined 185,000 Belarusian rubles (69,000 euros).

Ales Bialiatski and his colleagues were accused of smuggling large amounts of cash into Belarus and of financing class actions “great breach of public order”. All three men had pleaded not guilty.

A “shameful injustice”

After the judgment was announced, the main opponent in exile, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, castigated a “shameful injustice”. For its part, France has “denounced” this conviction and called on the Belarusian authorities “to be released immediately” the activist. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, meanwhile, called the trial a “prank call”.

Ales Bialiatski, 60, founded and hosted for years Viasna, the main human rights group in the country. He received the Nobel Peace Prize along with two other human rights organisations, at the Russian NGO Memorial and the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine. The committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize has condemned a judgment “politically motivated”.