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Viktar Babaryka was jailed for trying to run against President Alexander Lukashenko in a 2020 election and has been denied contact with his family.
Jailed Belarusian opposition politician Viktar Babaryka has resurfaced in a video after nearly two years incommunicado, posted just weeks before an election that is all but certain to keep the country’s authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in power.The 61-year-old was arrested after trying to run against Lukashenko in a 2020 election and sentenced to 14 years in a penal colony on corruption charges that he rejected. Babaryka has been denied meetings with his family and lawyers while behind bars.He was last heard from in February 2023, and other prisoners said later that year he was hospitalised with signs of beatings. Since then, authorities have not released any information about his condition.On Wednesday, Roman Protasevich, a former opposition journalist who later became a government supporter after being arrested himself, posted photos and a brief video in which Babaryka greeted his family. It is unclear when or under what conditions the images were taken, and they have not been independently verified. Babaryka, who seemed to be visibly thinner than during his last appearance,** was pictured wearing a prison uniform bearing a yellow tag designating him as a political prisoner and thus subjecting him to particularly harsh penal colony conditions.Pavel Sapelka, a representative of the Viasna human rights group, noted that the images were released ahead of the 26 January presidential election in which Lukashenko is seeking a seventh consecutive term to add to his more than three decades in power.”The authorities decided to show Babaryka in the run-up to the election to avoid accusations of forced disappearance of opposition activists behind bars,” Sapelka said. “The terribly emaciated Babaryka epitomizes the nightmare of repressions in Belarus, a sad reminder for others who dare to challenge Lukashenko.”Crackdown on dissentBabaryka is one of 1,258 political prisoners in Belarus, according to Viasna. The European Parliament has urged authorities to release him and other political prisoners.Top opposition figures were imprisoned or fled the country amid the sweeping crackdown that followed the 2020 election. Authorities responded to massive demonstrations protesting vote-rigging with brutal repressions in which about 65,000 people were arrested and thousands were brutally beaten by police.At least seven political prisoners have died in custody, according to Viasna.Like Babaryka, many other opposition activists have been held incommunicado.Lukashenko pardoned some political prisoners last year, but authorities launched a new wave of arrests before January’s election, seeking to eradicate any sign of dissent.Opposition leader-in-exile Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced to leave the country after challenging Lukashenko in the 2020 vote, said she was happy to see Babaryka alive and demanded that authorities release information about others who have been held incommunicado, including her husband, activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski.”We must now demand to see all others who have been held in complete isolation, and the cruel and inhumane incommunicado practice must stop,” she said.Protasevich ran a Telegram messaging app channel used by participants in the 2020 protests. He was living in exile when he was arrested in 2021 after being pulled off a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania that was diverted to Minsk by a fake bomb threat. He was imprisoned for eight years in 2023 on charges of extremism but made several confessional appearances on state television while in custody. Protasevich received a pardon soon afterwards and expressed gratitude to Lukashenko.Some opposition figures say that he sold out and now co-operates with the authorities, while others believe he is a victim of the Lukashenko regime. “We consider Protasevich a hostage,” said Sapelka of Viasna. “He’s doing all what is ordered by the Belarusian authorities.”Additional sources • AP
