Boxing champion, entrepreneur now on list: Number of political prisoners in Belarus reaches 631
On August 12, the Belarusian human rights community recognised two more people, reputed athlete Alyaksei Kudzin and businessman Andrey Sakalouski, as political prisoners, HRC Viasna reports.
MMA fighter and boxer Alyaksei Kudzin was charged under Part 2 of Article 363 of the Criminal Code (‘resistance to a police officer or other person protecting public order in coincidence with the use of violence or the threat to use it’). This week, judge Volha Dubovik of Maladzechna district court has sentenced him to 2.5 years of imprisonment in a minimum security penal colony.
In turn, Andrey Sakalouski got 3 years in jail. He was accused and found guilty of standing in a human chain, resisting the riot police, and even ‘intending to inflict pain on 11 injured riot policemen’.
Six human rights watchdogs called on the Belarusian authorities to immediately release all political prisoners, stop the criminal prosecution against them, as well as end political repression against the country’s citizens.
As of today, there are 631 names on the list of political prisoners in Belarus.
