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  • Prosecutor Seeks 10-Year Prison Terms For Belarusian Activists Considered Political Prisoners

    MINSK -- The prosecutor at the trial of two activists in Belarus -- Valeryya Kastsyuhova and Tatsyana Kuzina -- has asked a court in Minsk to convict the two women and sentence them to 10 years in prison each as part of an ongoing crackdown on dissent under authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

    The pros­e­cu­tor’s request to the Min­sk City Court was announced on March 6, exact­ly one month since the tri­al of the two start­ed in the Belaru­sian cap­i­tal.

    Kast­syuho­va and Kuz­i­na, who are con­sid­ered polit­i­cal pris­on­ers by rights groups, were arrest­ed in June 2021 on charges of assist­ing actions aimed to seize pow­er, calls for actions to dam­age the country’s nation­al secu­ri­ty, and incit­ing social hatred.

    Their sup­port­ers call the charges polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

    Kast­syuho­va is a not­ed polit­i­cal observ­er, the founder and chief edi­tor of the Our Opin­ion web­site, an edi­tor of the Belarus Annu­al­ly web­site, and the leader of an experts’ group known as Belarus Under Focus.
    Kuz­i­na is the founder of the School for Young Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion Man­agers and an expert of the Bipart inves­tiga­tive group.

    Sep­a­rate­ly on March 6, the Min­sk City Court start­ed the tri­al of 15 men and womenaccused of orga­niz­ing an attempt­ed arson attack at the house of a pro-gov­ern­ment law­mak­er, the chair­man of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Belarus, Aleh Hay­duke­vich, in June 2021. 

    Three defen­dants in the case will be tried in absen­tia sep­a­rate­ly.

    Many jour­nal­ists, rights activists, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions have been jailed in Belarus since an August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion where Lukashen­ka was offi­cial­ly announced as the win­ner.

    Rights activists and oppo­si­tion politi­cians say the poll was rigged. Thou­sands have been detained dur­ing coun­try­wide protests over the results and there have been cred­i­ble reports of tor­ture and ill-treat­ment by secu­ri­ty forces. Sev­er­al peo­ple have died dur­ing the crack­down.

    Lukashen­ka has refused to nego­ti­ate with the oppo­si­tion and many of its lead­ers have been arrest­ed or forced to leave the coun­try.

    The Unit­ed States, the Euro­pean Union, and sev­er­al oth­er coun­tries have refused to acknowl­edge Lukashen­ka as the win­ner of the vote and imposed sev­er­al rounds of sanc­tions on him and his regime, cit­ing elec­tion fraud and the crack­down.

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