Kicked out of the country – continues to fight against Lukashenko
Published 07.35
Human rights activist Ales Byalyatski was arrested after the major protests against Aleksandr Lukashenko in connection with the 2020 Belarusian presidential election.
Today, the Peace Prize winner is a free man – released from prison and kicked out of the country after a deal with the Trump administration.
– Active resistance in Belarus is impossible, Byalyatski tells TT during a visit to Sweden.
Ales Byalyatski was sitting in a detention cell in Minsk when he heard the news from his lawyer: He had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
– I screamed like a bee had stung me. I couldn't believe it was true, he says of the 2022 announcement.
He never received any official congratulations. However, the Belarusian tax authorities did hear from him and wondered if he intended to pay taxes on the prize money.
Nobel Prize provided protection
Three years ago, Byalyatski, Belarus' most famous human rights defender, was sentenced to ten years in prison.
The 63-year-old does not regret not leaving Belarus before he was arrested. At that time, several others in Vyasna, the organization he founded, were already in prison.
- It was a conscious decision to stay. There was so much repression and we worked to help the victims and their relatives, so our place was there, he says.
His status as a Nobel laureate gave him a certain protection in prison, he says.
- Other prisoners were mistreated, but they didn't touch me.
Released after a deal
Byalyatski was arrested after the major protests that broke out against dictator Alexander Lukashenko in connection with the 2020 presidential election.
In December 2025, he was released and deported along with a large number of other political prisoners after a deal with the United States. In exchange, the totalitarian regime in Minsk received relief from sanctions.
Today, Vyasna continues to document the regime's human rights violations in exile. Many political prisoners are still locked up.
- Active resistance in Belarus is impossible today. People are afraid of losing their jobs or being arrested, says Byalyatski.
"Don't forget Belarus"
It was in prison that he learned that Russia, with the support of Belarus, had launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. According to Byalyatski, the future of Belarus depends on how things go in Ukraine, since a weakened Putin means a weaker Lukashenko.
– Lukashenko understands that the war has reached a dead end and that they cannot achieve what they hoped for, to join Ukraine to the Russian empire. That is why he started negotiating with the Americans.
Ales Byalyatski has a clear message to Sweden and the EU:
– Do not forget Belarus, even though crisis after crisis follows one another. The regime has very little support and there is widespread dissatisfaction. That is why the repression continues, because they know that otherwise they will lose power.
FACTS
Ales Byalyatski
Alyaksandr “Ales” Byalyatski was born in Värtsilä (Vyartsilja in Russian) in Russian Karelia in 1962.
He is a trained teacher and linguist and was involved in human rights work in the then Soviet Belarus as early as the 1980s.
In 1996, he founded the human rights organization Vyasna (Spring), which was banned in 2003, but has nevertheless continued to operate.
In November 2011, Byalyatski was sentenced to 4.5 years in prison for “large-scale income evasion.” He was released early in 2014, but was arrested again in 2021 and sentenced to 7 years in prison for tax evasion and then 10 years in prison for smuggling and financing political protests.
Byalyatski has received a number of international awards for his work: the Council of Europe’s Vaclav Havel Prize in 2012, the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize and the Swedish Right Livelihood Award in 2020, as well as the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 (shared with the Russian organization Memorial and the Ukrainian CCL).
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