{"id":8553,"date":"2021-09-09T20:39:11","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T20:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/?p=8553"},"modified":"2021-09-10T09:42:03","modified_gmt":"2021-09-10T09:42:03","slug":"patrabuem-neadkladnaga-peraglyadu-prysudau-i-vyzvalennya-dvaih-palitychnyh-znyavolenyh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/2021\/09\/09\/patrabuem-neadkladnaga-peraglyadu-prysudau-i-vyzvalennya-dvaih-palitychnyh-znyavolenyh.html","title":{"rendered":"Human rights defenders call to review sentences in politically motivated trials"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">We, representatives of the human rights community in Belarus, note that the authorities continue to use political motives to imprison individuals in violation of the right to a fair trial, other rights and freedoms guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. These sentences are clearly selective in comparison with others.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Andrei Krylou<\/strong> was sentenced on September 2, 2021 to five years in a penal colony by the Va\u016dkavysk District Court under Part 1 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code for calling to participate in &#8220;riots&#8221; by posting a message in a Telegram chat. The accused pleaded not guilty, giving convincing arguments in favor of his innocence and the groundlessness of the accusation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>Siarhei Kupreshyn<\/strong> was sentenced on September 1, 2021 to three years in a penal colony by the Pastavy District Court under Article 368 and Part 2 of Article 293 of the Criminal Code for insulting officials and for storing gunpowder after losing a permit to own hunting weapons. The punishment under Article 293 was much stricter than those imposed by the courts in similar cases.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">After evaluating these cases of criminal prosecution, we conclude that each of them has a political motive for prosecution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">According to para. 3.2 of the <a href=\"https:\/\/spring96.org\/files\/misc\/politprisoner-guidelines-final_en.pdf\" class=\"count\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noindex noopener\">Guidelines on the Definition of Political Prisoners<\/a>, a political prisoner is a person deprived of liberty if, for political reasons, he or she is persecuted for at least one of the following reasons:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">a) the detention has been imposed in violation of the right to a fair trial, other rights and freedoms guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">d) the person has been detained in a discriminatory manner as compared to other persons.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">We, representatives of the Belarusian human rights community, declare that the <strong>persecution of<\/strong><strong>Andrei Krylou<\/strong> and <strong>Siarhei Kupreshyn<\/strong> is <strong>politically motivated<\/strong>, and both detainees are therefore <strong>political prisoners<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>In this regard, we call on the Belarusian authorities to:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<li><strong>review the measures and procedural decisions taken against them, respect their right to a fair trial and eliminate the factors that influenced the decision to enforce pre-trial detention;<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>immediately release all political prisoners and end political repression.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Human Rights Center &#8220;Viasna&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Legal Initiative<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Lawtrend<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><em>PEN Belarus<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Statement by the human rights community of Belarus<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4155,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1,4093],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-statement","category-news","category-creative-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8553"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8556,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions\/8556"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}