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A Belarusian pro-democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ales Bialiatski, has been given a 10-year imprisonment sentence. His sentence is to a maximum-security prison by a court in Minsk on charges of smuggling, according to state news agency TASS.
The sentence however has been condemned by Germany. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called it an attack on civil society by the Minsk government.
Bialiatski has been documenting human rights abuses in Belarus since the 1980s. He was arrested in 2020 amid widespread protests against President Alexander Lukashenko’s regime.
The sentence has been widely criticized as an injustice and a farce. There have been calls for the release of all political prisoners in Belarus.
