A Belarusian court on Monday sentenced opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya to 15 years in prison in absentia. This is reported by international news agencies. Previously, nineteen years were demanded against her. The 40-year-old Tikhanovskaya is considered the main opponent of Belarusian president Aleksandr Lukashenko. She was convicted of, among other things, high treason and founding and leading an extremist organization.
Together with another opponent, Pavel Latouchko, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison, she allegedly conspired “to seize power in an unconstitutional manner”. The conviction comes as no surprise to Tikhanovskaya. She previously described the trial against her as a “farce”. Shortly after her conviction, Tikhanovskaya declared her struggle on Twitter not going to stop. “This is how the regime ‘rewarded’ my work for democratic change in Belarus,” she wrote. “Today I am not thinking about my own conviction. I think of the thousands of innocent people, detained and sentenced to effective prison terms.”
In the spring of 2020, her husband and presidential candidate Sergei Tikhanovski was arrested; he was later sentenced to eighteen years in prison. Tikhanovskaya then traveled to European capitals to rally support for a democratic Belarus. After the fraudulent 2021 elections, where she took over her husband’s candidacy, she fled to Lithuania. The opposition accused Lukashenko of fraud and the massive demonstrations that followed were violently crushed. In recent years, several opponents and activists have fled Belarus because of the repressive regime. Several critics have since been given long prison sentences.
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