The Minsk District Court sentenced Eduard Babaryka, 34, to eight years in prison for “organizing mass protests” and “inciting hatred”, charges he rejects.
“I have not committed any of the crimes that I am accused of,” said Babaryka, who has been in custody since his arrest more than three years ago. “The investigation found no evidence of my guilt.”
He is the son of Viktar Babaryka, a presidential hopeful who tried to run against authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the 2020 election, but was denied registration for the contest and was later sentenced to 14 years in prison.
The condition of Babaryka Sr. has been unknown for more than two months, and his supporters suspect that he was beaten and admitted to a prison hospital.
The August 2020 vote that led Lukashenko to a sixth term was described as fraudulent by the opposition and the West, and the country was engulfed in mass protests, some of which drew more than 100,000 people. The authorities responded with a brutal crackdown in which more than 35,000 people were arrested, thousands of whom were beaten by police while in custody, and dozens of non-governmental organizations and independent media outlets were forced to shut down.
Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who faced off against Lukashenko in the 2020 election and was pressured to flee Belarus after the election, strongly condemned Babaryka’s sentence as “a vile act of revenge” for supporting her father. . “This injustice cannot be allowed to prevail,” Tsikhanouskaya declared.
