Political prisoner Statkievič nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
January 30, Pozirk. Lithuanian MEP Petras Auštrevičius has nominated Belarusian political prisoner Mikałaj Statkievič for the Nobel Peace Prize, the jailed politician’s Narodnaja Hramada party reported.
Auštrevičius confirmed the report to Pozirk.
Plain-clothes officers arrested Statkievič in Minsk on May 31, 2020. In December 2021, a judge sentenced him to 14 years in a maximum-security penal colony for “organizing riots.”
In 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence, and officers transferred him from a detention center in Homiel to Hłybokaje’s Penal Colony No. 13, whose administration registered him as “prone to extremism.” In August, wardens placed him in solitary confinement for six months, and in September, they locked him in a punishment cell.
Since February 2023, he has been held incommunicado.
In 2022, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the arrested founder and leader of the Viasna Human Rights Center, Aleś Bialacki, as well as to the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and the Russian human rights organization Memorial.
Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize twice: with Maryja Kaleśnikava and Vieranika Capkała in 2021 and also in 2022.
Belarus' political prisoners face torture, lack of medical care, isolation – report
December 29, Pozirk. The situation of political prisoners in Belarus remains consistently critical, the Viasna Human Rights Center said in a report. They are held in terrible conditions without quality and timely medical care, are subjected to torture and beatings …