Kyiv, Ukraine: a prominent member of the Belarusian opposition conducted a trial Wednesday, part of a multi-branch hard action on differences of opinion in the former Soviet country shaken by the disputed presidential election.
Maria Kolesnikova, the top member of the Opposition Coordination Board, has been detained since its arrest in September.
He was accused of conspiring to seize power, creating extremist organizations and called for actions that damage state security.
Trial of Kolesnikova and lawyer Maxim Znak, another prominent member of the Coordination Council facing the same charges, starting Wednesday in the Minsk Regional Court in the Belarus capital.
Kolesnikova, who helped coordinate the opposition protest that erupted after the presidential vote for August 2020, rejected the authority to force him to leave the country.
When the Belarusian security agent officer pushed him to the border with Ukraine in September to force him, he tore his passport and walked back to Belarus’s catch to face arrest.
“Freedom worth fighting for.
Don’t be afraid to be free,” he wrote in a message last year from the prison delivered by his lawyer.
” I don’t regret anything and will do the same thing again.
‘Same as Kolesnikova and Znak.
Go tried, Belarusian Olympic runner flew from Tokyo to Europe after fighting his team’s efforts to forcibly sent him back to Belarus after a training dispute.
The 24-year-old runner KrystSina Tsimanouskaya said he could be in danger if he returned to The homeland.
Belarus was shaken by protests driven by President Alexander Lukashenko who was awarded the sixth term after the presidential voting August 2020 that the opposition and the West condemned as false.
He responded to a demonstration with a big hard action that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands People were beaten by the police.
The authorities have increased their hard actions to differences of opinion in recent weeks, targeting independent journalists and democratic activists in hundreds of attacks.
‘Freedom worth fighting for’: Belarus activists at the trial
