The trial of Belarusian democracy activist Ales Bialiatski, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, began Thursday in Minsk, announced the Viasna Center, which he founded, the main human rights group in Belarus.
Bialiatsky and his companions Valentin Stefanovich and Vladimir Labkovich, detained since July 2021, appeared in court, in the prison cell reserved for the defendants, according to images from the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Initially detained for tax evasion, they are now accused of bringing large amounts of money into Belarus and “financing collective actions that seriously undermine public order,” the Viasna Center said in November, adding that if convicted, they face sentences of between seven and 12 years in prison.
On Friday, all three defendants pleaded not guilty.
Bialiatski, who founded the Viasna (“Spring”) Center in 1996, won the Nobel Peace Prize along with two other human rights organizations, Memorial (Russia) and the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine).
The Belarusian laureate and his two colleagues were arrested following mass anti-regime protests in 2020, following the unilaterally declared presidential election victory of Alexander Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994.
A fourth defendant, Dmitri Soloviev, is also on trial, but in absentia, having fled to Poland.
“This is a show trial, I do not trust this trial or what will happen in it,” Soloviev was quoted as saying by the French news agency AFP.
Soloviev described the accusations as “absurd” and the legal process as “theatrics”, adding that “the law does not exist in Belarus and the process is totally controlled by a government of gangsters.”
The 2020 movement rallied tens of thousands of people on the streets of Minsk and other cities for weeks before being gradually crushed by mass arrests, forced exile and imprisonment of opponents, journalists and NGO leaders.
“The West has adopted several sanctions packages against Belarus, which, on the other hand, has the unwavering support of Moscow.
Belarus has agreed to serve as a rear base for Russian troops in their offensive against Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, but the Belarusian army has, to date, not been involved in fighting on Ukrainian soil.
The trial of the founder of the Viasna Center will be followed by that of independent journalists and that of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the Belarusian opposition leader living in exile.
The trial of several journalists from the Tut.by website, the main independent media outlet in Belarus, is scheduled to begin next Monday, facing a range of charges, including tax evasion and hate speech. The media has been labeled “extremist” in 2021.
On the same day, the court in Grodno, in western Belarus, will hear the case of Belarusian-Polish journalist and activist Andrzej Poczobut, 49, a Minsk correspondent for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza who was arrested in March 2021.
According to the Viasna Center, Poczobut is accused of inciting hatred and calling for “actions aimed at undermining the national security of Belarus”, and could be sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Belarus had 1,448 political prisoners as of December 31, according to the same source.
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Source: TSF
