Belarus jails opposition activists on charges of terrorism and treason
GuardianNov 25, 2022
The Facts
The trial of 60-year-old Belarusian Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski began on Thursday. He is among hundreds of Belarusians who were jailed during a crackdown on anti-government protests in 2020 and faces 12 years in prison if convicted.
The 2020 protests erupted in opposition to Pres. Alexander Lukashenko, who's been in office since 1994. Bialiatski, the founder of the Viasna human rights center, faces trial alongside two other top figures in the group.
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
The Russian-allied Lukashenko government is an authoritarian, warmongering regime with no respect for human rights, which is why it felt the need to arrest Bialiatski and thousands of others to retain its grip on the Belarusian people. Bialiatski's career exemplifies the democratic ideals shared secretly by people in the East and vocally by leaders in the West, and the only solution to this unfortunate trial is to free him, his colleagues, and every other political prisoner currently behind bars.
Establishment-critical narrative
For Western governments, media outlets, and Western-aligned NGOs to criticize Lukashenko harshly is laughable, given that these same organizations have conducted smear campaigns and attempted international arrests of whistleblowers like Edward Snowden. The CIA is alleged to have been involved in regime change operations in Belarus, so to what extent these protests erupted out of nowhere is blurry at best. The US and EU should stop hypocritically criticizing other governments.
