Exiled Belarusian opposition chief says Katerina Bakhvalova’s extra sentence is punishment for displaying ‘the truth’.
Published On 13 Jul 2022
Belarus has sentenced a journalist, who lined protests in opposition to President Alexander Lukashenko, to an additional eight years in penal advanced for “bellow treason”, in step with the channel she worked for.
Katerina Bakhvalova – who gentle the pen name Katerina Andreyeva – became once already serving a two-year sentence for “violating public repeat” and became once due to the be released in September.
The 28-year-aged became once arrested in November 2020 with fellow journalist Daria Chultsova while filming one in all the anti-authorities rallies that swept Belarus that year.
“Our colleague Katerina Andreyeva became once sentenced to eight years in penal advanced,” the Poland-basically based Belsat TV channel and media talked about on Telegram.
It talked about she became once transferred from the penal advanced colony the set aside she became once held in Gomel, southeastern Belarus, and dropped at a pre-trial detention centre in February.
“For 55 days, her family did now not know the first points of the case,” Belsat talked about.
The Viasna rights neighborhood talked about on its web yelp that her family became once educated in April that she became once given a brand unique “bellow treason” price.
Political prisoners
Viasna considers Bakhvalova to be one in all 1,244 political prisoners in the nation.
Exiled Belarusian opposition chief Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya talked about the sentence became once punishment for displaying “the truth”.
“It makes me so offended to perceive the regime lift revenge on these who dare to withstand,” she talked about on Twitter. “She dared to point to the truth about the regime’s brutality to the area.”
Lukashenko’s regime has orchestrated a brutal crackdown on any pockets of dissent after remarkable protests swept Belarus in 2020.
The Belarus strongman, in energy since 1994, depends on neighbouring Moscow for give a grasp to. His nation had served as a springboard for the Russian navy to commence its assault on Ukraine in gradual February.