Tsikhanovsky sentenced to 18 years, “Lukashenko’s revenge against opponents”

Sergei Tsikhanovsky, 43, anti-Lukashenko blogger on youtube, with his channel “A country to live in”, a candidate in the elections of August 2019, was arrested in May 2020, a few months before the opening of the polls. Today he was sentenced, following a closed-door trial in Gomel, his hometown, which lasted 173 days, to 18 years in a maximum security prison along with 5 other prominent opposition figures.

Tsikhanovsky was accused of promoting the violent subversion of the government, organizing demonstrations and inciting social hatred, obstructing the work of the Electoral Commission and organizing actions against public order. After his arrest, his wife Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya, now in exile in Vilnius with her two children, ran for elections and took over the leadership of the protest movement for the re-election, for the sixth time, of Lukashenko.

“The dictator has publicly avenged his strongest opponents. He hopes to continue the repression in silence, hiding political prisoners in closed trials. But the whole world is watching. We will not stop. The very existence of these people is a crime. for the regime. They are being prosecuted for wanting to live in a free Belarus, “Tsikhanovskaya commented.

Another anti-Lukashenko blogger, Ihar Losik, was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Former presidential candidate in 2010, Mikalay Statkevich, 65, was sentenced to 14 years, activists Uladzimer Tsyhanovich to 15, Artsyom Sakau to 16, and Dzmitry Papou, to 16. Last July, the former 2019 presidential candidate and former banker Viktor Babariko, was sentenced to 14 years for corruption. In September, Maria Kolesnikova, one of the leaders of the protest against the result of the last elections, was sentenced to 11 years.