Mar 03,2023:A Belarusian court has sentenced Ales Bialiatski, Belarus’s top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, to 10 years in prison.
Bialiatski and three other top figures of the Viasna Human Rights Centre he founded were charged with financing protests and smuggling money on Friday.
Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Bialiatski and other activists sentenced in the same trial had been unfairly convicted, calling the verdict “appalling”.
“We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice & free them,” she said on Twitter.
Prosecutors had asked the Minsk court to give Bialiatski, who denied the charges, a 12-year sentence.
Belarusian state news agency Belta confirmed the sentences.
Poland’s prime minister denounced the sentencing.
“Today’s verdict is yet another outrageous decision of a Belarusian court recently,” Mateusz Morawiecki said in a Facebook post.
“The (Belarusian) authorities have repeatedly tried to silence him, but Ales Bialiatski never conceded in his fight for human rights and democracy in Belarus.”
Berit Reiss-Andersen, leader of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told Reuters: “The case, the verdict against him, is a tragedy for him personally.”
