Moscow – A Belarusian court has sentenced him to 11 years in prison in Maria Kolesnikova, an opposition leader who inspired mass protests against the dictatorial government of Alexander Lukashenko last year, state media reported.
Kolesnikova’s lawyer, Maxim Znak, was also sentenced to ten years in prison. In a closed trial, they were found guilty of threatening Belarus’ “national security”, founding an extremist group and conspiring to “take power unconstitutionally.”
Ramil Nasibulin / BelTA / Documentation through REUTERS
Tens of thousands of people protested across Belarus after last year’s presidential election, in which Lukashenko, who has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1994, declared victory. Many local and international observers criticized the election as fraudulent and the vote-counting process as untransparent.
Kolesnikova was the campaign administrator of the long-awaited President Viktor Babaryko, who was imprisoned in a KGB prison before the vote in a move seen as a way to eliminate Lukashenko’s tough competition.
Kolesnikova entered the spotlight, protesting alongside Veronika Tsepkalo and Svetlana Tikhonovskaya, the wife of another imprisoned candidate and popular blogger Sergey Tikhanovsky
The three women campaigned across the country, with Tikhonovskaya running in place of her husband and subsequently answering Lukashenko’s claim to win.
Tikhonovskaya and Tsepkalo have fled the country since then, and Kolesnikova is the only remaining protest leader in Belarus. She was detained by KGB agents last September, he put a sack on her head and led the politician to the Ukrainian border in an attempt to deport her.
But Kolesnikova refused to leave Belarus and broke her passport.
“I thought I was going nowhere,” Kolesnikova’s colleague Anton Rodnenkov, who was also detained and deported to Ukraine, told Radio Liberty at the time. “As soon as he went to the car and saw his passport, he immediately tore it to pieces and threw it out the window.”
“After that, he went out a window and walked towards the Belarusian border,” Rodnenkov added.
In video clips from inside the room, released Monday, Kolesnikova looked defiant, smiling and wearing her red lipstick.
Both Kolesnikova and Znak pleaded not guilty and described the trial as illegal, MediaZona reported, citing their lawyer Vadym Pylchenko.
The United States and the EU imposed harsh economic sanctions on the Lukashenko regime after it launched a brutal crackdown on protests last year, leading to thousands of arrests. Human rights groups issued multiple reports of torture and persecution of dissidents imprisoned in Belarus.
“The persecution and imprisonment of Maria Kolesnikova and Maxim Znak seeks to destroy the hopes of millions of people on whose behalf they spoke: a whole generation of Belarusians who strive to ensure peaceful change in their country and that human rights are respected, “Bruce Miller, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement to CBS.
“We demand that Maria Kolesnikova, Maxim Znak and hundreds of other people imprisoned in Belarus solely for exercising their human rights be released immediately.”
Despite international pressure, Lukashenko has continued to push his country towards a path of isolation. In May, he clashed intensely international criticism when authorities diverted a passenger plane and forced her to land in Minsk, detaining two dissidents on board.
With protests halted by special services pressure, the Belarusian president found strong support for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and so far has shown no signs of backing down.
Svetlana Berdnikova of CBS News contributed to this report.