Fogbow

Belarusian Nobel peace prize winner moved to brutal prison
Ales Bialiatski has been in jail for 20 months following mass protests over regime of Alexander Lukashenko

AP in Tallinn
Wed 24 May 2023 20.25 BST

The Nobel peace prize laureate Ales Bialiatski has been transferred to a notoriously brutal prison in Belarus and has not been heard from in a month, his wife has said.

Natalia Pinchuk said that Bialiatski, who is serving a 10-year sentence, has been kept in an information blackout since his transfer to the N9 colony for repeat offenders in the city of Gorki, where inmates are beaten and subjected to hard labour.

“The authorities create unbearable conditions for Ales and keep him in strict informational isolation. There is not a single letter from him for a month, nor does he receive my letters,” Pinchuk said on Wednesday.

In March, a court convicted 60-year-old Bialiatski – Belarus’s top human rights advocate and one of the winners of the 2022 Nobel peace prize – and three of his colleagues on charges of financing actions violating public order and smuggling.

It was the latest move in a crackdown on dissent in the country since 2020.

Bialiatski has spent 20 months behind bars since his arrest in 2021, and Pinchuk is concerned his health is deteriorating.

“In the most recent letters I see how his penmanship has changed and I see how the situation is worsening for him, both in terms of his health and his eyesight, and I am very, very worried about it,” she said. She urged the UN to intervene.

The harsh punishment of Bialiatski and three of his colleagues was a response to massive protests over a 2020 election that gave the authoritarian president, Alexander Lukashenko, a further term in office.




https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... tal-prison