Index on Censorship award nomineee Natalia Radzina of Belarus’s Charter 97 has revealed that the KGB tried to recruit her as an informant. She alleges that KGB officers psychologically tortured her whilst she was held at the KGB detention centre in Minsk. She has claimed that she was threatened with “five to eight years” in prison if she did not comply, and told that she would “have no children”.
Belarusian dissident Vasily Parfenkov has been sentenced to four years of imprisonment following his hearing on Thursday. He was convicted of breaking the window of a parliamentary building during protests against President Lukashenko’s re-election on 19 December. He will also have to pay pay 14m roubles ($4,700) in compensation for damage to state property. Parfenkov is an active supporter of opposition candidate Vladimir Neklyayev.
A solidarity rally in support of Belarus’s political prisoners is being held at the Belarusian Embassy in London on Saturday 19 February.
Thursday 17 February saw the beginning of the hearing against Vasil Parkiankou. The trial, which is being held in Minsk, has been described by an opposition activist as a mere “show trial”. Parkiankou is accused of smashing the windows of a government building in the course of a demonstration in December. This is a “public order offence”. He was protesting against vote rigging in the presidential election. Human rights organisation Viasna have said that more than 40 opposition members will be tried. They face up to 15 years of imprisonment.
This Saturday there will be a solidarity protest outside the Belarusian Embassy in London.
This Saturday, 19 February at 2pm, there will be a protest organised by the Belarus Committee outside the Belarusian Embassy, 6 Kensington Court, London (you can see it on a map here). The protest is to raise awareness of the prisoners of conscience detained by President Lukashenko since the rigged election in December.
Many of those detained have little access to justice and there are serious reports of ill-treatment. Of those detained many are close friends and associates of the Belarus Free Theatre. Please join us to send a clear signal to the Belarusian authorities that the world is watching.
The Belarus Committee is a group of NGOs including Index on Censorship, English PEN, PEN International, Amnesty, Article 19, human rights firm H20 Lawand individuals including Sir Tom Stoppard, with patrons Mikhail Gorbachev and Vaclav Havel, established in solidarity with all the victims of President Lukashenko’s regime, especially the prisoners currently detained by the secret police. The first trial of the prisoners begins on 17 February.
Belarus is Europe’s last dictatorship. The Presidential elections last December were described by the OSCE as “seriously flawed”, with the count in half of the polling districts “bad or very bad”. During an post-election rally in Independence Square in Minsk the authorities arrested members of the country’s political opposition and civil society activists. Over 600 people were arrested that evening including Natalia Koliada from the Belarus Free Theatre and Index on Censorship award nominee Natalia Radzina. Currently, 33 prisoners are still kept in custody, and journalist Irina Khalip — the wife of presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov — and presidential candidate Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu are both under punitive house arrest. They face up to 15 years in prison for orchestrating “mass disorder”.
