8 More People Recognized as Political Prisoners
On June 30, human rights defenders recognized 8 more people as political prisoners. The total number of people currently recognized as political prisoners in Belarus is 859.
The following names have been added to the list of political prisoners:
Dzmitry Vialau, Andrei Siarheyeu, Aleh Stefanovich, Andrei Latyshevich, Varvara Latyshevich, Ihar Sutyrka, Tatsiana Korsakava, and Dzmitry Korsakau.
You can find out who these people are and why human rights defenders consider their cases politically motivated here.
The list of all political prisoners in Belarus is here.
In total, as of now, 859 people are recognized as political prisoners, according to human rights defenders' estimates. Recently, their total number has not significantly increased and has even decreased, sometimes noticeably. But this is not because repression in Belarus is diminishing — rather, in parallel with new criminal imprisonment cases, there is a process of releasing those convicted who have fully served their sentences. Some are also released by pardons, including through US mediation, although new prisoners are constantly being recruited to replace them. Also, courts sentence some to "restricted freedom" (a form of non-custodial sentence often involving house arrest or strict supervision), after which a person leaves prison walls and is therefore no longer considered a prisoner.
It should also be noted that the statistics do not include all those imprisoned for political reasons; the real number of Belarusian political prisoners is higher. Human rights defenders simply know nothing about some of them.