Belarusian human rights organisations call on the authorities to immediately release Eduard Palchys and drop all the charges against him.
On November 6, well-known Belarusian blogger Eduard Palchys was officially accused of organising mass riots (Art. 293-1 of the Criminal Code). The maximum penalty under the article is 15 years of imprisonment.
“The rioting allegations against Eduard Palchys are groundless and illegal, as they are aimed at sanctioning his public activities <..> We consider the imprisonment of Eduard Palchys as arbitrary and politically motivated and Eduard Palchys himself as a political prisoner in accordance with paragraph 3.1 (a) of the Guidelines on the Definition of Political Prisoners,” the statement reads.
In late October, when the man was not released from prison after spending 30 days in custody, there were reports about the authorities’ intention to open a criminal case against him. In June, Palchys was tried in absentia and sentenced to two 15-day jail terms for ‘participating in unauthorised rallies’. Since that time, he had not lived at his home in the town of Lida to avoid being sent to a detention centre.
Palchys was about to leave the country, but he did not show up at the place from which he was supposed to be taken to the border by a driver. In late September, his wife Viktoryia Palchys wrote about his disappearance on Facebook.
A few years years ago, the blogger and founder of the 1863x.com was considered as a prisoner of conscience for the first time. Under the pen-name Jhon Silver, he published articles criticizing the Belarusian and Russian authorities on his website. After being detained by the Belarusian KGB in 2015, he moved to Ukraine. In January 2016, however, he was arrested in Russia and later extradited to Belarus.
Eduard Palchys was charged with inciting hatred on grounds of race, nationality, religion, language, or other social affiliation (Art. 130-1 of the Criminal Code). Having examined his publications, human rights activists did not find any extremist signs in them. In October 2016, Minsk City Court announced the verdict on his case and sentenced him to 1 year and 9 months of supervised release; the blogger was freed in courtroom.
