On Monday, a court in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, sentenced Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, leader of the opposition to President Alexander Lukashenko, who governs the country authoritarianly, to 15 years in prison on conspiracy charges. Tikhanovskaya was sentenced in absentia, i.e. without having participated in the trial, because she has been in exile since 2020.
Tikhanovskaya had been the opposition candidate in the August 2020 presidential election, which Lukashenko won overwhelmingly with more than 80 percent of the vote. Opposition parties contested the result and accused Lukashenko of electoral fraud: there were large protests against the president across the country for months, and the government reacted by arresting many of Lukashenko’s political opponents. Tikhanovskaya fled to Lithuania to escape arrest and has lived in exile ever since.
In addition to Tikhanovskaya, the Minsk court on Tuesday also sentenced to 18 years in prison Pavel Latushko, Minister of Culture between 2009 and 2012 who later became an opponent of Lukashenko, who fled to Poland in August 2020.
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