DM Monitoring
MINSK: A court in Belarus on Monday sentenced exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tikhanovskaya to 15 years in prison after a trial in absentia on charges including conspiring to overthrow the government, the latest move in a months-long effort by the Belarusian government to suppress dissent.
Tikhanovskaya ran against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in Aug. 2020, in an election that handed him his sixth term in office and was widely seen as rigged.
The results of the vote triggered the largest protests in the country’s history. Lukashenko unleashed a brutal crackdown on demonstrators, accusing the opposition of plotting to overthrow the government, and Tsikhnouskaya left to Lithuania under pressure.
Other key politicians and activists were either arrested or pressured to leave the country.
Tikhanovskaya and four other opposition figures were tried in their absence in the Belarusian capital, Minsk. The charges against them also included creating and leading an extremist group, inciting hatred and harming national security.
Another exiled opposition politician, Pavel Latushka, was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Maryya Maroz, Volha Kavalkova and Siarhei Dylevski were handed 12-year sentences.
All of them left Belarus after the protests erupted in August 2020. The demonstrations were the largest and the most sustained since Lukashenko assumed office in 1994. He has run the country with an iron fist ever since. His government unleashed a brutal crackdown against the protesters, detaining more than 35,000 and beating thousands.
The country’s most prominent human rights advocate and the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ales Bialiatski, was among those arrested. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison last week.
Tikhanovskaya ran against Lukashenko instead of her husband, popular opposition politician Siarhei Tikhanovski who was arrested in the middle of his campaign in 2020 and has been sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Last month, a court in Belarus added 18 more months to Tsikhanouski’s sentence over alleged violations of prison regulations.
Tikhanovski maintained her innocence during the trial that was held behind closed doors, according to the Viasna human rights center, Belarus’ most prominent rights group.
For two months, the politician was held “in inhumane conditions” in an isolation cell, the group said.
The decision comes just days after Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize winner and human rights campaigner Ales Bialiatski was jailed for 10 years, a move that prompted international condemnation.
Ms Tikhanovskaya stood in the August 2020 elections after her husband, former blogger and presidential candidate Sergei Tikhanovsky, was taken into custody. He was jailed for 18 years in 2021.
She claimed victory in the polls, which were widely thought to be rigged, but was forced into exile with her children the day after the vote.
Mr Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994 and defied months of protests after the polls, arresting and jailing hundreds of opposition politicians and activists.
He is now a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has become increasingly reliant on Moscow for economic, political and military support.
He has hosted Russian forces and allowed them to use Belarus as a staging ground for its invasion of Ukraine.