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TALLINN, Estonia — A Belarusian court docket on Friday sentenced Ales Bialiatski, Belarus’ prime human rights advocate and one of many winners of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, to 10 years in jail.
Bialiatski and three different prime figures of the Viasna human rights middle he based had been convicted of financing anti-government protests.
They had been arrested and jailed after huge protests over a 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a brand new time period in workplace. Lukashenko — in workplace since 1994 — has suppressed opposition and cracked down on impartial information media.
The 2020 protests endured for a number of months, the biggest wave of protest to hit Belarus, and authorities took harsh motion. Greater than 35,000 individuals had been arrested, and hundreds had been crushed by police. The fees in opposition to Bialiatski and his colleagues had been related to Viasna’s provision of cash to political prisoners and serving to pay their authorized charges.
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