Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tsykhanovskaya was sentenced in absentia yesterday to 15 years in prison on charges of “conspiracy to seize power.” Tsykhanovskaya ran in the 2020 national elections as the de facto leader of the opposition after her husband, Sergei Tsykhanovsky, who initially tried to lead the party, was arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and sentenced to 18 years in prison. service life expires.

After losing that election, which many in the country called rigged and protested against the regime’s brutal repression, Tsykhanovskaya fled to neighboring Lithuania to avoid arrest.

“15 years in prison. This is how the regime rewarded my efforts for democratic change in the country,” she wrote on her personal Twitter after the announcement of the court decision. “But today I don’t think about my innocence. I think about all those who are unfairly sitting in the country’s prisons I will not stop fighting until they are all released,” he added.

Activist groups estimate that around 1,500 people are currently in prison in Belarus on charges related to their views. Alexander Lukashenko, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for almost 30 years since 1994, rules the country with an “iron fist”, often accusing the West of trying to destabilize Belarus, and has repeatedly said that he will punish any attempt to “overthrow” his power severely .

In addition to Tsykhanovskaya, human rights activist, former politician and 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, who has been imprisoned for more than a year, was sentenced on Friday to another ten years in prison by a Minsk court, in a lawsuit that many Western media called “fraud.” .