A court in Belarus sentenced opposition leader Siarhei Tsikhanoski to 18 years in prison on Tuesday (December 14) after inciting an unprecedented protest campaign against strongman leader Alexander Lukashenko, state media said.
According to the Belarusian state newspaper Sovetskaya Belarus, after months of closed-door trials in a detention center in the southeastern city of Gomel, the court found that 43-year-old Zihanuski was guilty of organizing riots and inciting social hatred. .
Qihanuski’s wife and self-exiled Belarusian democratic idol Svyatlana Zihanusskaya condemned the sentence.
“The dictator publicly retaliates against his most powerful opponent,” she wrote on Twitter after her husband was sentenced.
“While hiding political prisoners in the secret trial, he hopes to remain silent. But the whole world is paying attention. We will not stop,” she added in English.
Siarhei Tsikhanouski was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment, Artsiom Sakau and Dzmitry Papou were sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment, Ihar Losik and Uladzimir Tsyhanovich were sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment, and Mikalai Statkevich was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment. The existence of these people is itself a crime against the regime. They are suppressed because they want to live in a free Belarus. pic.twitter.com/UuL9Fx2IAe
-Sviatlana Tsihanouskaya (@Tsihanouskaya) December 14, 2021
One of the five co-defendants of Zihanuski in this high-profile case, 65-year-old veteran politician Mikola Starkevich, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Starkevich challenged Lukashenko in the 2010 election but was sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in early 2015 and banned from participating in the 2020 polls.
Since May 2020, both Zihanuski and Starkevich have been detained.
Little is known about the trial that began in June.
Since taking office in 1994, Lukashenko has been suppressing the opposition because of unprecedented protests that broke out after the 2020 election, which the West believes is unfair.
The Lukashenko government has imprisoned or forced to flee all his famous opponents.
Zihanuski planned to compete with Lukashenko in the Belarusian presidential election in August 2020, but was arrested and imprisoned before voting.
His wife Sviatlana-a political novice at the time of his arrest-took his place in the polls and is widely believed to have won the election.
She vowed to fight early on Tuesday.
“I will continue to defend the one I love. He became the leader of millions of Belarusians,” Tikhanovskaya said in a video address posted on Twitter, as he sat on a wall with children’s drawings. In front of the wall.
“I will try to do something very difficult-maybe impossible-to bring us closer to the moment we meet in New Belarus.”
She added that any sentence will be “illegal and cannot be reconciled.”
Another well-known co-defendant in the case, 29-year-old Igor Losik, was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Tuesday.
He was detained in the summer of 2020 and accused of using his popular channel on the messaging app Telegram to incite riots.
The other three co-defendants in this case are blogger Vladimir Tsyganovich and two activists associated with Tsikhanouski: Artyom Sakov and Dmitry Popov.
Ziganovic was sentenced to 15 years in prison, while Sakov and Popov were each sentenced to 16 years in prison.
‘Stop cockroaches’
The charismatic activist Qihanuski called Lukashenko a “cockroach”, and his campaign slogan was “Stop the cockroach”, which is a new insult to Lukashenko. His supporters waved slippers during the protests—usually used to kill insects.
However, the activist was detained on charges of violating public order shortly after announcing his election for president.
His wife Qihanusskaya was a full-time mother of two children when her husband was arrested. It was considered unfair that Lukashenko was forced to flee the former Soviet Union Belarus to neighboring Lithuania after Lukashenko launched a post-voting suppression. From the West.
She quickly won the recognition of Western governments and became the leader of the supreme opposition in Belarus, and has been lobbying for changes in the country ever since.
In September, a Belarusian court sentenced opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova to 11 years in prison for violating national security and conspiring to seize power.
The former flute player who refused to exile, along with Tsikhanouskaya and Veronika Tsepkalo, who fled to Greece, was a member of the female trio of protest leaders.
In July, another opposition leader and former banker Viktor Babaryko was sentenced to 14 years in prison on charges of fraud.
