May 25, 2023 – 10:11 AM
Nobel Peace Prize-winning author Alice Pjaljaky has been transferred to a notoriously brutal Belarusian prison, but apart from this information, according to his wife, they haven’t heard from him for a month, as he writes: guardian.
At the beginning of March, we wrote that human rights activist Alesh Pgaljaki was sentenced to ten years in prison in Belarus. In 1996, Bialacki founded the Vyaszna (Spring) Center for Human Rights in response to the brutal repressive measures of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Pagaljaki was the first to go to prison between 2011 and 2014 on charges of tax evasion, and was arrested again in 2020, after what independent international monitors described as a rigged presidential election. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2022, sharing it with the Russian Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Human Rights Organizations.
Pgalacky’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk, spoke about the fact that the writer was transferred to prison N9 in the city of Gorky, intended for recidivists, but nothing has been heard from him since then. According to Pincsuk, prisoners are beaten and forced into forced labor in the N9 prison. He said, “I saw in your previous messages that your condition, health and vision are deteriorating, and I am very concerned about this matter.”
Pagaljaki in January 2023 – Photo: Vitaly Pivovarczyk/Belta/AFP
Alexander Lukashenko, a longtime ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1994 and supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During mass protests in 2020, which revolved around elections that the opposition described as rigged, more than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten by the police.
In 2020, hundreds of thousands of demonstrations did not stop even after the brutal measures committed by law enforcement officers, and seemingly irreversible changes began in Belarusian society. At the time of the events, telex reported from the country’s capital Minsk.
