Prosecutor Seeks 10-Year Prison Terms For Belarusian Activists Considered Political Prisoners

The pros­e­cu­tor’s request to the Min­sk City Court was announced on March 6, exact­ly one month since the tri­al of the two start­ed in the Belaru­sian cap­i­tal.

Kast­syuho­va and Kuz­i­na, who are con­sid­ered polit­i­cal pris­on­ers by rights groups, were arrest­ed in June 2021 on charges of assist­ing actions aimed to seize pow­er, calls for actions to dam­age the country’s nation­al secu­ri­ty, and incit­ing social hatred.

Their sup­port­ers call the charges polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed.

Kast­syuho­va is a not­ed polit­i­cal observ­er, the founder and chief edi­tor of the Our Opin­ion web­site, an edi­tor of the Belarus Annu­al­ly web­site, and the leader of an experts’ group known as Belarus Under Focus.
Kuz­i­na is the founder of the School for Young Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion Man­agers and an expert of the Bipart inves­tiga­tive group.

Sep­a­rate­ly on March 6, the Min­sk City Court start­ed the tri­al of 15 men and womenaccused of orga­niz­ing an attempt­ed arson attack at the house of a pro-gov­ern­ment law­mak­er, the chair­man of the Lib­er­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of Belarus, Aleh Hay­duke­vich, in June 2021. 

Three defen­dants in the case will be tried in absen­tia sep­a­rate­ly.

Many jour­nal­ists, rights activists, and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions have been jailed in Belarus since an August 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion where 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.