Belarus recently imposed draconian prison sentences on students and reporters for monitoring presidential elections and other peaceful activities. These actions warrant the United States sanctioning of prosecutors and judges who dance to the tune of dictator Alexander Lukashenko.
On Sept. 6, Judge Siarhei Khrypach of Minsk City Court sentenced Marfa Rabkova, 27, to a 15-year prison term on a dozen trumped-up charges issued by prosecutor Raman Biziuk. These included “incitement of social hostility towards the government” and “calls for actions aimed at causing harm to the national security of the Republic of Belarus.” Ten masked officers of GUBOPiK, the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption, violently detained Rabkova and her husband, who was released the next day, while they were walking home in Minsk on the evening of Sept. 17, 2020. The month before, Rabkova was monitoring the 2020 presidential elections on behalf of the Viasna Human Rights Center. At the time of her arrest, she was a manager of Viasna and a law student at the European Humanities University in Lithuania.
Another Viasna member, Andrey Chapiuk, was sentenced to six years during the same trial. Eight others received lighter sentences. An observer for Viasna, journalist Nasta Loika, who came to the sentencing to report on the outcome of the trial, was arrested inside the courtroom. The same judge quickly sentenced her to 15 days of administrative detention for “petty hooliganism.”
Members of Viasna have been harassed and detained, their homes raided, since the establishment of the center in 1996. In 2021 alone, Belarus shut down more than 275 human rights organizations. An amendment to the Criminal Code was added in January of this year that criminalized any unregistered human rights activity. The exact number of political prisoners in Belarus is unknown but is believed to be well over a thousand.
Since her arrest, Rabkova has been kept in the pretrial Detention Center No. 1 in Minsk. She was denied legal counsel and family visits. She barely managed to survive the severe case of COVID-19 that she contracted twice. Due to poor prison conditions, she lost several teeth but was not allowed to see a dentist. She suffered from abdominal pain, inflammation of lymph nodes, and low blood pressure. Again, she was refused medical care. She lost 40 pounds.
Still, a former cellmate wrote about her: “Marfa Rabkova is a concentration of self-sacrifice and willpower. After the call to rise at 6 am, many prisoners try to snatch five minutes. Marfa immediately gets up, makes her bed, changes clothes, reads and writes until 10 pm in between the prison schedule.” She smiled when her 15-year sentence was announced in court. The dictator of Belarus may not last that long.
Regardless, the U.S. should hold accountable those Belarusian officials who have chosen to serve injustice.
Eugene M. Chudnovsky is a distinguished professor at the City University of New York and co-chairman of the Committee of Concerned Scientists.
