Belarus court jails Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski for 10 years: Who is he?

Last October, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on human rights and democracy, sharing it with Russian rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. Bialiatski remained in prison during the Nobel ceremony and his wife accepted the award in his behalf.

A pro-democracy activist since the 1980s

A scholar of Belarussian literature, school teacher and museum director, Bialiatski has been involved in pro-democracy protests since the 1980s. He was an ardent campaigner for Belarussian independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1980s, organising anti-Soviet protests across the country.

However, while Belarus declared independence in 1990, its hopes of becoming a robust democracy were short-lived. In 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus’s first president in the country’s first and, according to experts, only free election after independence. He has served as president ever since.

Lukashenko’s regime has been challenged in protests ever since, with the mass opposition protests of 1996 being among the first. It is during these protests that Ales Bialiatski co-founded the Viasna human rights organisation with the aim of providing financial and legal assistance to political prisoners and their families, according to Reuters. Viasna also documented abuses against political prisoners by the authorities.

In prison between 2011 and 2014

This is not the first time that Ales Bialiatski has found himself behind bars. According to Reuters, he was imprisoned between 2011 and 2014 on a charge of tax evasion in connection to Viasna’s funding – a charge which he had denied.

He was again picked up by authorities in 2021 during a crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was yet again declared the winner of a presidential election in 2020. The opposition claimed that the elections were rigged and took to the streets to express their protest.

Recently, Lukashenko, a close Putin ally, has been in news for allowing Russian troops to launch missiles against Ukraine from Belarus as well as use the country for troop movement and logistics.

A flimsy trial

Bialiatski and two others from Viasna were put to trial in January this year on charges of “smuggling by an organised group” and “financing of group actions grossly violating the public order”, Reuters reported. The trial has been heavily criticised by human rights groups and observers across the world, with many calling it a “sham”.

Amnesty International called it “a blatant act of injustice wherein the state is clearly seeking to enact revenge for their activism”.

Prosecutors had requested the court to award a 12-year sentence to Bialiatski, who had denied all charges of wrongdoing. The court gave Bialiatski a 10 year sentence while slapping his co-accused with a 7 and a 9 year sentence each. The convicts were also slapped with significant fines, totalling over $ 100,000, and nearly $300,000, which the court deemed that the convicts amassed using illegal means, will also be collected from them.

Reactions

The prison sentence has invited criticism and caused outrage both in Belarus and outside. Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said Bialiatski and other activists sentenced in the same trial had been unfairly convicted, calling the verdict “appalling”, Reuters reported.

On the eve of the sentencing, 23 human rights organisations released a statement condemning the Belarussian government and demanding the release of all political prisoners. The signatories include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, European Platform for Democratic Elections (EPDE) and ARTICLE 19.

Viasna itself has been highly critical of the whole situation. In its statement after the conviction, Viasna said that “Solidarity actions are taking place abroad today to protest the unlawful conviction and criminalization of human rights defense activities in Belarus.”