On January 25, the Belarusian human rights community issued a joint statement on their recognising another seven persons as political prisoners, HRC Viasna reports.
Seven human rights watchdogs declare that the imprisonment of the following people is politically motivated:
Henadz Syauruk, sentenced to 4 years in a penal colony under Art. 364 of the Criminal Code (‘threatening to use violence against an employee of the internal affairs bodies on social networks’), Art. 369 (‘insulting a government official’), Art. 368 {‘insulting the president’), Art. 130 (‘inciting hatred’);
Yury Chudzinovich, sentenced to 4 years in a penal colony under Art. 130 of the Criminal Code (‘inciting hatred on the Internet’), Art. 188 (‘defamation’), Art. 174 (‘evasion of child support’);
Dzmitry Kaneuski, sentenced to 3 years in a penal colony under Art. 130 of the Criminal Code (‘inciting hatred against police officers’);
Andrey Sachanka, sentenced to 3 years in a penal colony under Art. 364 of the Criminal Code (‘threatening to use violence against an employee of the internal affairs bodies on the Internet’), Art. 366 (‘threat against an official performing official duties or another person performing a public duty’);
Alyaksandr Ivanou, sentenced to 3 years in a penal colony under Art. 364 of the Criminal Code (‘threats of violence against law enforcement officers’), and Art. 391 (‘insulting a judge’);
Uladzislau Tsimashchuk, sentenced to 3 years in a penal colony under Art. 130 of the Criminal Code (‘ inciting hatred against police officers’).
Ruslan Slutskі sentenced to 11 years of restricted freedom under Part 1 of Art. 14, part 1 of Art. 309 of the Criminal Code for attempting to render unusable railway tracks by trying to connect the rails with a metal wire, which could lead to delays in train traffic, as well as under Part 1 of Art. 289 of the Criminal Code for ‘an act of terrorism’ consisted of throwing homemade metal spikes on the highway in front of cars participating in the pro-government rally, which damaged the tires of four cars.
“The qualification of the actions of the individuals listed above, as well as the type and amount of their punishment, was clearly disproportionate to the severity of the offense and thus inappropriate. In each case, the imprisonment was an excessively harsh response of the authorities to the protests of citizens. In a number of cases, there was a clearly selective approach to determining the punishment for politically motivated acts as compared to similar acts with no political motive,” the statement reads.
The human rights defenders called on the Belarusian authorities to immediately release all political prisoners and stop political repression in the country; to review the sentences passed against the above mentioned political prisoners while exercising the right to a fair trial and eliminating the factors that affected the qualification of actions, the type and amount of punishment; to release the mentioned political prisoners by taking other measures to ensure their appearance in court.
To date, there are 995 political prisoners in Belarus.
belsat.eu
