Supporters of the regime’s detractor affirm that her health condition “is unknown” and denounce that her lawyers have been denied “for the third time” to communicate with her
Belarusian opposition leader Maria Kolesnikova, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, has been hospitalized in intensive care, her supporters said Tuesday. “Urgent! Maria Kolésnikova is in the ICU of the Gomel Clinical Hospital (in the southeast of the country). The cause is unknown”, collects the Twitter account of Viktor Babariko, another of the detractors of the Government of Alexander Lukashenko and who is also in jail.
From that same platform, the opposition has denounced that the defense of the opposition has not been allowed “for the third time” and “for no clear reason” to be able to communicate with her. According to a statement from her supporters, Kolesnikova, 40, was admitted to a surgical unit on Monday and later transferred to intensive care. “Terrible news! Our dear Masha [diminutivo de María]We all hope you are well,” the Belarusian opposition leader in exile, Svetlana Tijanóvskaya, wrote on Telegram.
Maria Kolesnikova was sentenced in September 2021 to eleven years in prison after being found guilty of “conspiring to seize power”, “calling actions that undermine national security” and “creating an extremist group”. She was one of the leaders of the large-scale demonstrations against the Belarusian regime in 2020, when Lukashenko claimed victory in an election that the international community considered rigged.
Kolesnikova was jailed in September 2020 after resisting an attempt to expel her from her country. Her co-defendant, lawyer Maxime Znak, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a high-security penal colony. Both worked for Barariko, a rival of the Belarusian president sentenced in 2021 to 14 years in prison for fraud, a case that he denounced as a politician. They belonged to the seven-member Coordination Council installed by the opposition, after the August 2020 presidential elections to try to organize a peaceful transition after 25 years of the Lukashenko regime.
flight into exile
Kolesnikova is one of three women propelled to the head of the protest movement, with Svetlana Tijanóvskaya running for president instead of her imprisoned husband, and Veronika Tsepkalo. The latter two fled the country under pressure from the authorities while Western governments adopted sanctions against the Belarusian government, which is supported by Russia.
An ally of Moscow, Belarus served as a rear base for Russian troops for their offensive against Ukraine at the end of February, but has not participated in the fighting on Ukrainian soil.
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