Belarus court jails Nobel laureate Bialiatski for 10 years

Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski was sentenced by a court in Minsk on March 3 to 10 years in a maximum-security penal colony.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya slammed the sentencing of Bialiatski and other activists in the same trial as “appalling”, CNN reports.

“We must do everything to fight against this shameful injustice & free them,” she wrote on Twitter.

Germany called the 10-year prison term an attack by Minsk on civil society. On Twitter, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock slammed the charges and trial against Bialiatski and co-defendants Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich as a ”farce” adding they were being judged ”simply because of their years-long fight for the rights, dignity and freedom of people in Belarus.”

”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).”

Baerbock urged Belarus to end political persecution and demanded the release of all of the more than 1,400 political prisoners.

Bialiatski, a pro-democracy activist, has documented human rights abuses in Belarus since the 1980s.

Bialiatski won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2022 alongside human rights groups 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.