A court sentenced eleven students and one teacher to long prison terms on Friday. Security forces have now ransacked the homes of more than a dozen independent journalists. At least three of them were arrested. Criticism of the authorities’ actions came from Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg, among others.
The students were arrested last November during mass protests against Lukashenko. You were enrolled at various Minsk universities and have since been de-registered. The court sentenced ten of them and the teacher to more than two and a half years in prison for disturbing public order. One student received a two-year prison sentence.
“I’m hurt, but not scared,” said student Anastasia Bulybenko in court. “We are the future generation of tolerance and freedom, the future of this country.” It is “obvious” that the judgment aims to “suppress the protest movement,” said another student, Ilya Trachtenberg.
In short: “We must not and will not let up”
Kurz and Schallenberg sharply condemned the Belarusian regime’s actions against students. “These are simply sham trials and another attempt to use repression to eliminate civil society, which is fighting for its freedom, and the political opponent. We must not and we will not let up,” Kurz said in a statement on Friday afternoon. Schallenberg added: “The sham processes with which the regime in Minsk wants to silence democratically committed students once again show how much Lukashenko is stuck in the past. Instead of using the enormous potential of the younger generation, he wants to destroy it.”
Several hundred students arrested
University students were often at the forefront of the massive protests that began after the controversial presidential election last August. In a report a few months ago, Amnesty International estimated that several hundred students had been arrested and more than 150 were expelled from their schools.
Raids against journalists
According to Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, raids against journalists included the apartment of the head of the station’s Minsk office, Valentina Schdanko. Several other journalists who work for the US-funded station also reported searches.
The apartments of three journalists who work for the opposition broadcaster Belsat were also searched for their information. An independent journalist in the western city of Grodno also reported a raid on his home.
It was only on Wednesday that security forces in Belarus searched the offices of important human rights groups and arrested several employees. In total, at least five independent human rights groups appear to have been affected by the police operations, including the Wesna Human Rights Center and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee.
At a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this week, President Lukashenko announced that he would find all “pathetic NGOs” in Belarus and bring them to justice.
The head of state, who has ruled for almost three decades, was officially declared the winner after the election in August 2020 despite massive allegations of fraud. This sparked unprecedented mass protests, which were brutally suppressed by the security forces. The action taken by the authorities against demonstrators and the media has met with sharp international criticism.
