Minsk: Tech writer gets 2 years of restriction of liberty over insulting top election official on web
On April 15, a guilty verdict was announced in the case of Alyautsina Korchyk, human rights centre Viasna reports. The 25-year-old technical writer was tried in Maskouski district court of Minsk.
The defendant was charged with ‘insulting representative of authority’ (Article 369 of the Criminal Code).
On October 30, Alyautsina Korchyk left the comment ‘No one could ever turn into a worse sl*t than Yarmoshyna is’ on Tekegram, intending to discredit the honour and dignity of the chairperson of the Central Election Commission (CEC) and tarnish the election campaign, the investigators state.
In January, the woman spent in custody three days. According to her, she gave testimony during the investigation as the security officers were exerting psychological pressure on her; coercing her into confession, they allegedly threatened to place her in the notorious detention centre on Akrestsin Street.
On Thursday, judge Lidziya Tselitsa took into account public prosecutor Yauhen Serakou’s demand and sentenced Alyautsina Korchyk to two years of restriction of liberty without being sent to a correction institution.
Infamous Lidziya Yarmoshyna has been Head of the Central Election Commission of Belarus since December 1996, when Alyaksandr Lukashenka signed a decree dismissing her predecessor Viktar Hanchar and appointed her to the post. She has been repeatedly blacklisted by Western countries for being involved in election fraud, the CEC, in turn, keeps disgracing itself of rigging Belarusians’ votes since then. According to the official resolution by the CEC, 5.8 mln Belarusian citizens voted in the 2020 presidential election, 4.6 million (80.1%) supported Lukashenka. Belarusian officials state that his strongest rival Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya only got 10.12% of votes. However, on the back of announcing the results of the official exit polls, Belarusians started to take to the streets, claiming that their votes were stolen. It should be recalled that Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus in August after being retained for about seven hours in the Central Election Committee, where security officers were exerting pressure upon her and threatening her family.
