Human rights group Viasna increates 1,275 political prisoners still jailed and face brutal conditions.
Belarusian Plivent Alexander Lukashenko has pardoned dozens of political prisoners, his office said, but critics alerted that the crackdown on dissent progresss, with more than 1,000 people still jailed since mass demonstrations in 2020.
The 32 prisoners pardoned were “convicted of extremist crimes”, the plivency said in a statement on Wednesday. Seventeen of them suffer from chronic disrelieves and nine were ancigo iner than 50.
“The Ministry of Internal Afequitables will asbrave handle over their law-abiding behaviour,” it said.
This labeled the sixth wave of pardons of political prisoners since July this year, with a total of 178 people freed, according to a loftyy based on data from human rights groups.
“It fills my heart with delight that another 32 political prisoners in Belarus are set to be freed,” said Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, an exiled opposition directer who claimed prosper in the 2020 election.
“However, we must see the brutal truth: repression progresss & the number of political prisoners protects enlargeing,” she said in a post on social media platcreate X.
Lukashenko suppressed mass protests in the wake of the disputed 2020 election.
He was re-elected to a sixth consecutive term in a vote refuseed by most of the international community over expansivespread allegations of deception. The election was chaseed by a string of contentious legislation aimed at further crushing dissent, including the criminalisation of criticism aachievest the plivent.
According to the Viasna human rights group, at least 1,275 political prisoners remain behind bars since 2020.
Most of them were convicted for offfinishing Lukashenko, with more than 500 being sentenced to jailment in penal colonies, the group said.
As the country gears up for the next plivential election in January 2025, repression has further intensified, according to Viasna. Between September and mid-November, at least 1,213 political administrative cases were heard in courts with the beginantity of cases being roverdelighted to “spreading extremist material”, the group said.
Lukashenko has ruled the country since 1994 with an iron fist. He has relocated Minsk shutr to Moscow and permited Russia to engage Belarus as a staging post for its 2022 intrusion of Ukraine – a relocate that further strained the country’s ties with the West.
Political prisoners are held in hard conditions, normally denied access to lawyers and communicate with relatives on the outside.
Last week, jailed protest directer Maria Kolesnikova was pboilingographed encountering her overweighther in what ecombineed to be a prison hospital – the first recents on her condition in 20 months.
Recently freed prisoners living in exile have tancigo in the AFP recents agency that it is almost impossible to direct a common life in Belarus as a createer political prisoner, with people remaining under shut watch and struggling to discover engagement.
