Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski has been transferred to a notoriously brutal prison in Belarus and has not been seen for a month, his wife revealed today.
Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski is serving a ten-year prison sentence for allegedly smuggling money into Belarus to fund his pro-democracy group.
The activist’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk, told The Associated Press that she has had no information from her husband since his transfer to the N9 colony for repeat offenders in the town of Gorki, where she says prisoners are beaten and subjected to forced labor.
“The authorities create unbearable conditions and keep him in strict information isolation. There has not been a single letter from him for a month, nor has he received my letters,” Pinchuk said by phone.
In March, a court convicted 60-year-old Bialiatski – Belarus’s foremost human rights defender and one of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureates – and three of his colleagues on charges of financing actions that violate public order and smuggling.
“In the most recent letters, I see how his handwriting has changed and I see how the situation is getting worse for him, both in terms of his health and vision, and I am very, very concerned about that,” she said.
The punishment of Bialiatski and three colleagues was a response to protests at the 2020 elections that gave President Alexander Lukashenko a new term.
Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who backed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has ruled the country since 1994.
During the 2020 protests, over 35,000 people were arrested.
*With Lusa
