A Belarusian court on Monday sentenced exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaia in absentia to 15 years in prison after a trial in which she was accused of conspiring to unconstitutionally overthrow the government.
Tikhanovskaia, who has already guaranteed that she will continue to fight for democracy in the country, left Belarus in August 2020, shortly after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko secured a sixth term as head of state in a vote that sparked the biggest protests. in the country’s history and that the opposition leader claims to have won.
Lukashenko then unleashed a crackdown on the protesters, accusing the opposition of plotting to overthrow the government, leading to the arrest of large numbers of local politicians and activists, some of whom, under pressure, fled into exile.
In addition to Tikhanovskaia, four other opposition figures were also tried in absentia in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, accused of creating and leading an extremist hate speech group and causing harm to national security.
All the defendants, some exiled in Poland and others in Lithuania, were sentenced in absentia.
Another opposition politician, Pavel Latushka, was sentenced to 18 years in prison, while Maryya Maroz, Volha Kavalkova and Siarhei Dylevski received 12 years in prison.
The five opponents of Lukashenko’s dictatorial regime left Belarus after the protests that broke out in August 2020, the repression of which resulted in the arrest of more than 35,000 opponents and the beating and torture of women of activists and opposition political leaders.
Today, in his personal account on the social network Twitter, Tikhanovskaia promised that he would continue with the fight and with his political activities and considered that the trial was a “farce”.
“Today I am not thinking about my own sentence. I am thinking of thousands of innocent people, arrested and sentenced to actual prison terms. I will not stop until each and every one of them is released,” the Belarusian opposition leader wrote on Twitter.
In total, according to data from the organization for the defense and promotion of Human Rights Vesná, which as a movement organized the post-election protests, there are 1,438 political prisoners in Belarus, including ‘influencers’, businessmen, activists, protesters and presidential candidates, including Sergei Tikhanovski, husband of Tikhanovskaya.
Last December, Lukashenko, based on an amnesty law, commuted or reduced the sentences of 4,500 prisoners, although none of those imprisoned for protests against electoral fraud benefited.
Source: TSF
