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Belarus on Monday opened the trial of a journalist and member of the country’s giant Polish minority, the latest in a series of court cases opposing critics of President Alexander Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime.
Andrzej Poczobut faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of endangering national security and inciting discord. Poczobut, a journalist for the influential Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and a leading figure of the Union of Poles in Belarus, has been in prison since his arrest in March. 2021.
He has extensively covered the gigantic protests that rocked Belarus for weeks in 2020 following a presidential election that gave Lukashenko, in place since 1994, a new term but widely noted by the opposition and Western countries as fraudulent.
The trial in the western city of Grodno was closed to independent journalists and Western diplomats, but courtroom footage suggests Poczoyet lost a lot of weight during his detention.
The 2020 protests were the largest and most sustained in the country. The government responded to the protests with a crackdown that led to the arrest of more than 35,000 people, thousands beaten by police, and the closure of dozens of media outlets and nongovernmental organizations.
This month, Belarus indicted human rights activist Ales Bialiatski, co-winner of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, for anti-investment protests. Another lawsuit against two personalities of the independent news portal TUT. BY, now banned, began last week.
About 300,000 of Belarus’ 10 million people are ethnic Poles. The Union of Poles came under pressure from the government after the government accused Poland of trying to foment an uprising against Lukashenko.
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