Ales BIALIATSKI

Writer, PEN Belarus member, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski continued to serve a 10-year prison sentence in a medium-security penal colony in Horki – a facility known for inmates being beaten and subjected to hard labour. Detained on 14 July 2021, alongside several Viasna colleagues following raids by Belarusian law enforcement officers on more than a dozen civil society and human rights organisations, Bialiatski was convicted on 3 March 2023 of fabricated charges of smuggling (Article 228.4 of the Belarusian Criminal Code) and organising and financing actions that grossly violate public order (Article 342.2 of the Belarusian Criminal Code) and sentenced to 10 years.. His sentence was upheld on appeal on 21 April 2023 (see Case Lists  2023/2024, 2022 and 2021). He was reportedly prevented from receiving packages and medicine. He wasin urgent need of medical care as of 31 December 2024.  

 Bialiatski has been targeted by Belarusian authorities for years. On 4 August 2011, he was arrested on spurious charges of tax evasion. On 24 November 2011, he was sentenced to four-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in a high security prison colony. PEN members actively campaigned for his release; he was amnestied in June 2014. On 21 May 2023, to mark the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus, PEN International published a letter signed by 103 Nobel Laureates, expressing solidarity with Bialiatski. In May 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention to be arbitrary and called for his immediate release. 

 Ales Bialiatski, born on 25 September 1962, is a literary scholar, essayist, and human rights defender. He was a founding member of the Belarusian literary organisation Tutejshyja (The Locals) and formerly served as head of the Maxim Bahdanovich Literary Museum in Minsk. In April 1996, he founded the Viasna Human Rights Centre, an organisation that campaigns for opposition activists who are harassed and persecuted by the Belarusian authorities. Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2022 alongside the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, and the Ukrainian human rights organisation Center for Civil Liberties.