Belarusian-speaking father of many children from Minsk sentenced on political criminal charges

Kiryl Loika. Photo from his Facebook

Kiryl Loika is 45 years old, lives in Kaliadzichy near Minsk.

He is a father of many children; he and his wife have six children.

Kiryl is a Baptist. He plays in the ChurchBrass brass band, founded in 1999 in the Minsk church of the MSCC ECHB. Kiryl is Belarusian-speaking; he translates church songs into Belarusian.

The man was convicted in the Minsk City Court under parts 1 and 2 of Article 361‑4 of the Criminal Code of Belarus — "facilitating extremist activity".

He was sentenced to "home chemistry" (restricted freedom without referral to a correctional institution).

The Belarusian authorities consider "extremism" to be subscriptions to independent channels, media, the presence of links to them on social networks, or the presence of Belarusian national, pre-Lukashenka symbols on social networks or on belongings. "Extremism" also includes almost any criticism of the authorities, official historical narratives, or expressions of solidarity with Ukraine. Many recent criminal cases under the article on "facilitating extremism" were related to the "Hayun case".

"Belarusian Hayun" is an OSINT monitoring project that was created in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine through Belarus. The project tracked the military activity of Russian and Belarusian troops, relying on information from Belarusians. Its activities were coordinated by a group of activists led by Anton Matolka.

The "Hayun case" began after security forces detained an activist who had lived underground in Belarus for several years. A link to join the Hayun bot, which she had been sent at the very beginning of the project's existence, was found on her mobile phone. The fatal error was that the link was permanent. As a result, the security forces were able to connect to the bot and extract all information from it. They obtained messages from accounts that wrote to the bot, as well as their IDs and usernames.

Immediately after the hack, the founder of "Hayun," Anton Matolka, explained how the information leak occurred and announced the closure of the project.

According to calculations by the "Belpol" union of law enforcement officers and human rights defenders, the names of 9594 people who fell under politically motivated criminal cases are known. In total, various political repressions (criminal cases, administrative cases, dismissals, searches) affected about 500,000 Belarusians. Several hundred thousand people were forced to leave the country.

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