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.