The Belarusian regime sentences opposition leader Svetlana Tijanóvskaya to 15 years in prison in absentia

The Belarusian regime intensifies the persecution of its political rivals, whether they are in the country or not.

A Minsk court has sentenced several leading opposition members in absentia to between 12 and 18 years in prison.

Among them, the candidate who combined the dissent vote against Aleksandr Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential elections, Svetlana Tijanóvskaya.

“Fifteen years in prison.

This is how the regime

my work for democratic changes in Belarus.

But today I don't think about my own sentence;

I think of the thousands of innocent people who have been arrested and sentenced to prison in real terms.

I will not stop until she is released ”, Tijanóvskaya wrote on her social networks after learning of her ruling against her.

The sentence was feared in advance, since the regime imposed its own lawyers on Tijanóvskaya and the rest of the dissidents for their alleged defense.

The former Minister of Culture and former ambassador Pavel Latushka, another of the defendants, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.

The ruling also imposes 12 years on the campaign manager of the presidential candidate, María Moroz;

another close collaborator, the political scientist Olga Kovalkova, and the trade unionist Sergei Dylevsky.

These sentences come just a few days after the Supreme Court handed down 10 years in prison for the human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize winner last year, Ales Bialiatski.

Latushka, exiled in Warsaw, remembered today the also director of the NGO Viasná: “We have to show that we are stronger than the dictator [Lukashenko]: 10 years for Ales Bialiatski.

Thousands of political prisoners in Belarus.

What should the West do?

Expand the sanctions against the regime, close the borders to the transport of merchandise, ”said the politician and one of the leaders of the opposition platform on Twitter.

Tijanóvskaya, in exile in Lithuania, and the other dissidents have been found guilty of committing high treason, conspiring to seize power, advocating a coup, inciting hatred and leading an extremist group.

The political leader ran in the 2020 presidential elections after her husband, the activist and candidate Sergei Tijanovski, was arrested, and she unified the vote of the entire opposition in her candidacy.

Despite the unity of the dissidence, the Lukashenko government announced some official results surrounded by suspicions: the Belarusian president claimed to have obtained 80.1% of the votes against 10.1% of the opposition.

Accusations of fraud by independent observers and citizens sparked massive protests that were soon violently put down by the Kremlin-backed Belarusian regime.

No Western country recognized the official results of the elections, and opponents proclaimed Tijanóvskaya president in 2022.

The exiled leader had requested in January that the evidence used in the trial against her be sent to her, and the response of the magistrates has been for her to return to Minsk to familiarize herself with the documents, which would mean her immediate imprisonment, as has already happened with other activists who did not leave the country.

Her husband, Sergei Tijanovski, was sentenced in December 2021 to 18 years in prison on charges of causing mass riots, inciting hatred and promoting actions that seriously disturb public order, to which was added another year and a half for allegedly disobeying orders now as a prisoner.

And Maria Kolesnikova, an activist who led the opposition demonstrations together with Tijanóvskaya, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2021. The dissident refused to leave the country and tore up her passport so as not to be expelled from it.

Both Tijanóvskaya and Latushka have denounced that the proceedings opened against them in absentia violate basic human rights and freedoms.

The former minister rejected the lawyer appointed by Minsk because he considered that it would give an appearance of legitimacy to a trial that he has dismissed as a farce.

Latushka also requested a copy of all documents filed with the court, but has not received any relevant ones.

According to Viasná, the human rights NGO led by Ales Bialiatski, 1,456 political prisoners remain in jail in Belarus.

One of them is the Nobel laureate himself.

The sentences that have been imposed have been criticized by the United Nations for consisting of "a selective use of criminal prosecution and an instrumentalization of the justice system by the Belarusian authorities to nullify all scrutiny and dissent in the face of their repressive policies."

Tijanóvskaya also launched her darts on Monday against the magistrates who support the Belarusian regime.

“(...) And I also don't want to think about the officials of the regime, its judges and prosecutors, those who commit these crimes.

That they think better of themselves because Lukashenko will not defend them before a real and independent court ”, Tijanóvskaya stressed on her Telegram channel.

In that social network, she has warned the president's collaborators that "Belarusian lawyers have collected a sufficient number of testimonies and [Lukashenko] will only save himself and his close circle."

For them she had one last rhetorical question: "Should we protect someone who is doomed to fail?"

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