MINSK -- The Minsk City Court has sentenced two activists -- Valeryya Kastsyuhova and Tatsyana Kuzina -- to 10 years in prison each for participating in anti-government protests as part of an ongoing crackdown on dissent under authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Kastsyuhova and Kuzina, who are considered political prisoners by rights groups, were arrested in June 2021 on charges of assisting actions aimed at seizing power, calls for actions to damage the country’s national security, and inciting social hatred.
They went on trial on February 6 and exactly one month later, the prosecutor at the trial requested that the court convict and sentence the two women to a decade behind bars. The court on March 17 did exactly that.
Their supporters call the charges politically motivated.
Kastsyuhova is a noted political commentator, the founder and chief editor of the Our Opinion website, an editor of the Belarus Annually website, and the leader of an expert group known as Belarus Under Focus.
Kuzina is the founder of the School for Young Public Administration Managers and an expert with the Bipart investigative group.
Many journalists, rights activists, and representatives of democratic institutions have been jailed in Belarus since an August 2020 presidential election in which Lukashenka was officially announced as the winner.
Rights activists and opposition politicians say the poll was rigged. Thousands have been detained during countrywide protests over the results and there have been credible reports of torture and ill-treatment by security forces. Several people have died during the crackdown.
Lukashenka has refused to negotiate with the opposition and many of its leaders have been arrested or forced to leave the country.
The United States, the European Union, and several other countries have refused to acknowledge Lukashenka as the winner of the vote and imposed several rounds of sanctions on him and his regime, citing election fraud and the crackdown.