Very critical towards the regime, the blogger Sergei Tsikhanovski had been arrested in May 2020 while he was campaigning for his wife, today in exile, during the presidential election.
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It is the heaviest trouble pronounced against a Belarusian opponent. Blogger Sergey Tsikhanovski, Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya’s husband, the head of the opposition in exile, was sentenced on Tuesday, December 14, to eighteen years in prison for “massive disorders organizations”, “hate incentive”, ” “Disorders to public order” and “obstruction to the electoral commission”.
Even Viktor Babariko, considered the most serious adversary of President Alexander Loukachenko in the presidential election of August 2020, had not been sentenced to a pain as severe – arrested before the ballot, he Fourteen years in prison, and his Campaign Director, Maria Kolesnikova, eleven years old. “This record condemnation reflects the anger of the regime towards Tsikhanovski, which it perceives as an important threat and the instigator of the protest movement,” says Artyom Shraibman Political Analyst. The 43-year-old blogger was very critical of the Belarusian President, whose fraudulent re-election triggered unprecedented protests. The fact that he is the husband of Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya, become the face of the Belarusian opposition, is probably no alien either to the severity of his sentence.
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“The dictator is publicly revenge of his fierce opponents. In hiding political prisoners in closed doors, he hopes to pursue the repression in silence. But the whole world observes. We will not stop,” reacted M me Tsikhanovskaya on Twitter. A few hours before the verdict, she had published a video, sitting in front of a portrait of her husband. “I will continue to defend this man whom I love and who has become a leader for millions of Belarusians,” she stressed, saying “to do the impossible” to find him as soon as possible.
912 Belarusian political prisoners
The blogger was judged since June with other co-accused at Homiel, in the south-east of the country. Almost no information filtered on this trial, held in camera. Defense lawyers have been prohibited to express themselves on pain of losing the right to exercise. Another major figure of the opposition, Mikola Statkevitch, 65, was sentenced to fourteen years of detention. Artiom Sakov and Dmitry Popov, who worked for Mr. Tikhanovski, had a sentence of sixteen years. Vladimir Tsyganovich, Critical Youtubeur of power, and Igor Lossik, 29-year-old opposition journalist, both were sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment. According to the Viasna Human Rights NGO, Belarus now has 912 political prisoners.
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