HOMEL, Belarus – A famous Belarusian human rights lawyer and his assistant have been sentenced to prison terms for providing legal assistance to activists, journalists and others caught in a continued crackdown by the authoritarian regime Alyaksandr Loukachenka.
A court in the city of Homel, in the south-east of the country, on November 3 sentenced Leanid Sudalenka and Tatsyana Lasitsa to three and two and a half years in prison, respectively, for “the organization and preparation of actions seriously violating public order and the financing of such activities”.
Both have pleaded not guilty.
Crisis in Belarus
Read our current coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka ramps up pressure on NGOs and independent media in a brutal crackdown on protesters and the opposition following an August 2020 election widely seen as fraudulent.
A third defendant in the case, Maria Tarasenka, who was not in pre-trial detention, fled the country after the trial began in early September.
Sudalenka, a prominent human rights defender for two decades, has been repeatedly targeted by Belarusian authorities.
In April, Homel’s police raided his home while he was in Sweden.
The convictions are part of a brutal crackdown that was sparked by protests over the results of an August 2020 presidential election which Lukashenka claims to have won by a landslide. The opposition says the vote was rigged and much of the West refused to recognize the results.
Regardless of the court decision of November 3, the Ministry of the Interior noted he called the Belsat television channel and its social networks an “extremist formation”.
The announcement follows a Minsk court ruling two days earlier sentencing Belsat representative Iryna Slavnikava and her husband Alyaksandr Loyka to 15 days in prison each for sharing “extremist” content on Facebook.
Belsat, funded by Poland, was declared “extremist” by Belarusian authorities in July and had its website and all social media accounts blocked. The TV station covered extensively the mass protests that followed last year’s presidential election.
According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 28 journalists are currently behind bars, including two from Belsat, Katsyaryna Andreyeva and Darya Chultsova, who were sentenced to two years in prison in February for reporting on the protests.
The mass protests against Lukashenka have met with the brutal and sometimes violent detention of tens of thousands of people. Much of the opposition leadership has been imprisoned or forced into exile.
Several protesters were killed and thousands arrested during mass protests demanding Lukashenka’s resignation. There have also been what human rights groups call credible reports of torture in the crackdown.
