Commenting on the beginning of the trial on the politically motivated case of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and head of the human rights group "Viasna" Ales Bialiatski and his colleagues Valentin Stefanovych, Vladimir Labkovich and Zmytser Soloviev,

Amnesty International

's Eastern Europe Director Marie Struthers said the following:

"The trial of Ales Bialiatskyi and his fellow human rights defenders is an act of blatant injustice, an obvious attempt by the state to take revenge on them for their activities.

During this disgraceful travesty of justice, the defendants cannot even hope for a semblance of justice.

The judge immediately not only refused to conduct the trial in Belarusian, not in Russian, but also to remove the handcuffs from the defendants or postpone the court session so that they could fully familiarize themselves with the case materials."

"In a country where politically motivated prosecutions and mass arrests of people for criticizing the government are commonplace, human rights work is as necessary as it is dangerous.

Alyaksandr Lukashenka's administration will especially take revenge on human rights defenders, and the verdict of this "court" in advance appears to be an act of cruelty," she added.

"All charges against Ales Bialiatski, Valentin Stefanovych, Vladimir Labkovych and Zmytser Soloviev should be dropped immediately, and those of them who are in custody should be immediately and unconditionally released," Struthers urged.

The international human rights organization

Human Rights Watch

writes on Twitter about the trial of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialyatskiy: "Arrested in 2021 on false charges, Bialyatskiy is on trial together with his colleagues from Viasna, one of the most famous human rights organizations in Belarus."