For three years, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ales Bialiatski has been innocently imprisoned in Belarus. On 25 September, Libereco – Partnership for Human Rights (Libereco) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) therefore protested in front of the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in Brussels.
On the occasion of Ales Bialiatski’s 62nd birthday on 25 September, the human rights organisations Libereco and FIDH once again have demanded the release of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and founder of the Belarusian Human Rights Centre Viasna. At the demonstration in front of the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in Brussels, MEPs Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, Thijs Reuten and Michał Kobosko, as well as Bialiatski’s colleague and former political prisoner Leanid Sudalenka, recalled the fate of Bialiatski and all other over 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus.
“Their situation remains bleak. They are subjected to extreme hardship in detention, and many are denied any contact with relatives or lawyers,” said Strack-Zimmermann. She had taken over the godparenthood for Bialiatski as part of Libereco’s #WeStandBYyou solidarity campaign.
Because the Embassy in Brussels did not respond to repeated requests, the politician submitted a petition initiated by Libereco with more than 82,000 signatures from 82 different countries and a personal letter to the embassy’s door. The petition appeals to the Belarusian regime to release all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally.
Demonstration in Brussels: Freedom for Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ales Bialiatski and all other political prisoners in Belarus
Ongoing repression in Belarus
Together with four of his Viasna colleagues, Bialiatski is imprisoned in Belarus solely because of his legitimate human rights work. Since the violent crackdown on the mass protests in the wake of the rigged elections of 9 August 2020, persecution of political opponents has sharply increased in Belarus. Bialiatski has been imprisoned since 14 July 2021. He was arrested while fighting for the release of hundreds of other political prisoners. In March 2023 after trumped-up charges, he was sentenced to ten years imprisonment and a heavy fine.
In Belarusian prisons, torture and other ill-treatment are still common practices and go unpunished. The judicial system is abused to suppress critical voices, and the authorities arbitrarily make “extremism” and “terrorism” accusations against organisations in order to stop their activities and legitimise criminal prosecution. Only recently, a court in Minsk classified Libereco’s accounts on the social media sites X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram as “extremist”.
