Former journalist Aksana Yuchkavich sentenced to three years of home confinement

The case of Catholic activist Aksana Yuchkavich was con­sid­ered in the Frun­zen­s­ki Dis­trict Court of Min­sk. She was sen­tenced to three years of home con­fine­ment and released in the court­room, reports Nasha Niva.

Aksana Yuchkavich is a poet, orga­niz­er of cul­tur­al events, and for­mer jour­nal­ist for the catholic.by web­site of the Roman Catholic Church in Belarus. She was detained in Min­sk on 23 Jan­u­ary 2024.

On Feb­ru­ary 3, it was announced that she had been charged with orga­niz­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in actions that gross­ly vio­lat­ed pub­lic order.

Accord­ing to the Khryst­siyan­skaya Viziya reli­gious ini­tia­tive, Aksana is a well-known and respect­ed Chris­t­ian activist in the Roman Catholic com­mu­ni­ty of Belarus, who worked in the Chris­t­ian and Social Cen­ter of the Good Samar­i­tan Char­i­ty Mis­sion in Min­sk. She is the author of a col­lec­tion of chil­dren’s poems and video shows. Aksana Yuchkavich was engaged in sci­en­tif­ic research in the field of Belaru­sian philol­o­gy and taught Pol­ish lan­guage cours­es.

In 2020, she was among those arrest­ed dur­ing an annu­al com­mem­o­ra­tion march to Kura­p­aty, a death pit asso­ci­at­ed with Sovi­et repres­sions of the 1930s, and spent 9 days in deten­tion. She was also arrest­ed in 2010 after the crack­down on post-elec­tion protests in Min­sk and then sen­tenced to 10 days in prison.

The Feb­ru­ary 19 state­ment by the Belaru­sian Human Rights Com­mu­ni­ty says that free­dom of peace­ful assem­bly is guar­an­teed by Arti­cle 21 of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights. This free­dom is sub­ject to no restric­tions oth­er than those pre­scribed by law and nec­es­sary in demo­c­ra­t­ic coun­tries in the inter­ests of nation­al secu­ri­ty, pub­lic safe­ty, pub­lic order, the pro­tec­tion of pub­lic health or morals, or the pro­tec­tion of the rights and free­doms of oth­ers. There­fore, human rights defend­ers, assess­ing the per­se­cu­tion of per­sons deprived of their lib­er­ty and accused of group actions that gross­ly vio­late pub­lic order, believe that this is «polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed per­se­cu­tion in con­nec­tion with the exer­cise of free­dom of peace­ful assem­bly and expres­sion of opin­ion on the announced results of the elec­tion of the Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus».