From the prison camp to the intensive care unit and back again only a few days later – the fate of Maria Kolesnikova, one of the best-known activists in Belarus, who was sentenced to eleven years in prison, remains uncertain.
(dpa)
The Belarusian opposition activist Maria Kolesnikova, who has been sentenced to a long prison term, is expected to leave the hospital on Monday after treatment in the intensive care unit. This was announced by the Belarusian opposition on Friday, citing her father Alexander Kolesnikov, who had met the doctor of the political prisoners. Maria had breakfast and felt normal, Kolesnikov said. It is still unclear why the country’s most prominent prisoner had to be treated in intensive care.
Opponents of ruler Alexander Lukashenko complained that the lawyer still had no access to Kolesnikova and that there was no reliable information about her condition. She is said to have had surgery this week. The father only saw the doctors, but not his daughter herself. Kolesnikova had previously been placed in solitary confinement as punishment. A judge had rejected a complaint against the particularly harsh solitary confinement.
Kolesnikova, together with the opposition leader Svetlana Tichanovskaya, who lives in exile in the EU country Lithuania, is considered a figurehead of the Belarusian opposition to Lukashenko. The two led nationwide protests in 2020 against the disputed presidential election in which Lukashenko declared himself the winner. He had the police and the judiciary crack down on demonstrators.
While the leader of the opposition, Svetlana Tichanovskaya (centre) – here at a demonstration in Berlin in 2021 in memory of political prisoners – fled to Lithuania, her comrade-in-arms Kolesnikova was imprisoned.
The 40-year-old Kolesnikova was arrested in the summer of 2020 and sentenced to eleven years in prison for conspiracy to subvert. The trial, like that against other Lukashenko opponents, was considered a political staging.
Human rights organization calls for help for prisoners
The International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) denounced the situation of political prisoners in Belarus as “catastrophic”. According to ISHR, there are currently around 1,400 political prisoners in Belarus.
The IGFM appealed to Germany to work for independent doctors and specialists to have access to Kolesnikova. In addition, the father and the lawyer should be able to visit them.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Bündnis 90/Grüne) wrote on Twitter on Wednesday that the regime in Minsk had to guarantee Kolesnikova’s health and release her. “Your commitment to democracy is not a crime,” Baerbock said in her tweet.