Belarusian authorities should drop all charges and immediately release Nasta Lojka, a prominent Belarusian human rights defender who faces up to 12 years in prison because of her activism, a group of seven Belarusian and international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, said on April 3.
Lojka was detained three times by Belarusian authorities in a two-month period in late 2022. No official reasons were given for her arrests at the time, the last of which came in October 2022, though later she was charged with organizing group actions that "grossly violate the public order" and with "incitement of racial, national, religious, or other social hatred or discord."
The latter charge was apparently because of Lojka's involvement in a 2018 report detailing the persecution of Belarus's anarchist community.
Belarusian authorities have subjected her to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, disbarred her lawyer, whose successor they refused to attest, initiated a "smear campaign" against her, and failed to respond to inquiries about her situation by United Nations human rights monitors, the group said in a statement.
"Nasta Lojka is a political prisoner whom Belarusian authorities are persecuting in reprisal for her long-standing work as a woman human rights defender," they said.
The groups noted that this is is not the first time Belarusian authorities have "persecuted" Lojka in retaliation for her work, though the actions they have taken against her since September are "unmatched in their severity."
Since September 2022, Lojka has served a total of six 15-day administrative sentences on bogus “petty hooliganism” charges, the groups said.
In November 2022, law enforcement also raided Lojka’s mother’s home in what rights groups have called an attempt to put additional pressure on the human rights defender.
“The Belarusian authorities’ prosecution of Nasta Lojka is politically motivated and a blatant act of reprisal for her nearly 15 years of courageous human rights work,” said Anastasiia Kruope, assistant Europe and Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“The authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Lojka, and drop the criminal case against her.”
