Belarusian opposition member Svetlana Tikhanovskaya sentenced to 15 years in prison

First modification: 03/06/2023 – 23:31

Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya was sentenced in absentia in a Belarus court to 15 years in prison on charges including conspiracy to overthrow the government and treason.

From her Twitter account, Tikhanovskaya reacted to the sentence: This is how the regime “rewarded” my work for democratic changes in Belarus. But today I do not think about my own sentence. I am thinking of thousands of innocent people, arrested and sentenced to actual terms of imprisonment. I will not stop until every one of them is released.”

President Alexander Lukashenko has spared no effort to suppress dissent in the country. The opponent was a presidential candidate in 2020 and ran against the current president in an election that was accused of being manipulated by the opposition. Lukashenko won his sixth term amid criticism.

Then, Tikhanovskaya condemned the result and along with other opponents denounced that the results had been manipulated to give Lukashenko victory. The president, who has ruled Belarus with an iron fist for nearly 30 years, denied the accusations and responded harshly.

The election results triggered an unprecedented wave of protests in Belarus and Lukashenko launched a brutal crackdown on protesters while accusing the opposition of conspiring to oust him from office. Svetlana decided to leave the country and go into exile in Lithuania.

Amid the manhunt launched by the president, an ally of his Russian neighbor Vladimir Putin, other politicians and activists were put behind bars or pressured to leave the country.

In the Belarusian capital, Minsk, along with Tikhanovskaya, four other opposition figures were tried in absentia. In the photos published by the state news agency Belta, an empty cage was seen where the defendants always go. The other charges for which they were tried included creating and leading an extremist group, inciting hatred and harming national security.

According to Tikhanovskaya, in an interview for the Associated Press news agency, the court-appointed lawyer she was given for the trial has not contacted her once and has not responded to her requests to review the case files. .

In addition, he denounced that the law and the justice system in Belarus no longer work and that the State “has become a great KGB”, recalling the investigative agency of the secret police of the extinct Soviet Union.

“The regime takes revenge on me and all Belarusians, it takes revenge for the fact that we chose freedom in 2020, for not giving up, not giving in, but for continuing to fight,” Tikhanovskaya said, adding that “if Lukashenko could, I would have jailed everyone.”

In addition to the prison sentence, the opponent must pay a fine of $11,000.

On the other hand, the exiled Pavel Latushka was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He had been Minister of Culture and Ambassador to various European countries. The sentence also includes a ban from holding public office for five years.

Maryya Maroz, Volha Kavalkova and Siarhei Dylevski received 12-year sentences.

One of the 35,000 detained after the 2020 protests, the country’s most prominent human rights defender and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ales Bialiatski, was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week.

Tikhanovskaya: between 10 and 20 people are imprisoned every day in Belarus

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya came to the fore when she ran for president in place of her husband, opposition politician Siarhei Tsikhanouski, who was arrested in the middle of the 2020 presidential campaign and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

Last month, a Belarusian court added an additional 18 months to Tsikhanouski’s sentence for alleged violations of prison rules. The politician maintained his innocence during the trial, which was held behind closed doors, according to the Viasna human rights center, the DD group. H H. highlight of Belarus.

According to Viasna, the politician was held for two months in an isolation cell “in inhumane conditions.”

The human rights group has counted a total of 1,456 political prisoners in Belarus.

Tikhanovskaya denounces that every day between 10 and 20 people are imprisoned in Belarus, which shows “how little confidence the regime has in itself.”

Lukashenko has held power since 1984, repeatedly accusing the West of trying to destabilize his country and vowing to forcefully crack down on any attempt to challenge his rule.

With AP and Reuters