Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski went on trial in Minsk on Thursday on charges of financing protests against the country’s authoritarian government; he faces up to 12 years in prison if he’s found guilty.
The trial is part of a broader crackdown on the opposition by the government of Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko.
Bialiatski’s trial began with the handcuffed 60-year-old human rights activist seated in a cage in the courtroom surrounded by police officers alongside two other defendants.
Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, alongside prominent Russian human rights organization Memorial and the Ukrainian human rights watchdog Center for Civil Liberties. The founder of human rights watchdog Viasna was arrested in July 2021 and has been in jail since then.
The judge rejected his request to have the handcuffs removed and to hold the trial in Belarusian — one of the country’s official languages. The trial is open to the public but Western diplomats were not admitted.
The three pleaded innocent to the charges.
“Nobel Peace Prize winner & Belarusian national hero Ales Bialiatski must be very dangerous for the regime — they conducted 120 searches & collected 300 pages of materials, a new record for a political case. But he’s only dangerous for the criminals who took power from our people,” tweeted opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is in exile and faces trial in absentia on January 17.
Her husband Sergei, a popular blogger who aimed to challenge Lukashenko during the 2020 presidential election, was sentenced in 2021 to 18 years in prison for inciting hatred and social unrest.
Tsikhanouskaya said three labor union activists were sentenced earlier Thursday to prison terms of between eight and nine years.
Another exiled opposition leader, Pavel Latushko, also faces trial in absentia this month. Andrzej Poczobut, an activist with the country’s Polish minority, goes on trial on January 16. Next week, several independent journalists will also go on trial.
According to Belarusian human rights watchdogs, there are almost 1,500 political prisoners in the country.
Cozy with the Kremlin
Lukashenko is trying to ensure that there is no return to the mass protests that threatened his hold on power in the immediate aftermath of the fraudulent 2020 election.
“The repressions in Belarus only became worse in the last year,” Tsikhanouskaya tweeted on Wednesday. “Trials in absentia, the death penalty for attempted terrorism, thousands labeled as extremists, destruction and seizure of property, and detention of relatives are just a small part of the regime’s terror machine.”
Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, is also trying to clamp down on any opposition to his close alliance with Russia — one of his regime’s few friends.
Belarus has opened its air space and military bases for Russia to use in its invasion of Ukraine, and its training of thousands of newly mobilized Russian troops. However, Lukashenko has not sent his own military into the war.
Despite there being thousands of Russian soldiers in Belarus — and even with the addition of the most effective Belarusian troops — that is not enough to stage another attack into northern Ukraine, Ukrainian Brigadier General Oleksiy Gromov told a military briefing in late December.
