A Belarusian court on Friday sentenced one of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winners, the human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, to 10 years in prison – continuing a brutal crackdown on dissent that began in response to pro-democracy protests in 2020.
Bialiatski, 60, a veteran human rights defender, founded the Viasna Human Rights Centre in 1996. He shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize with Ukraine’s Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL), which is working to document alleged war crimes by Russia, and the Russian human rights group Memorial, in a pointed rebuke of Russian President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine.
