She is one of the figures of the Belarusian opposition to the regime of President Alexander Lukashenko. Maria Kolesnikova, who is serving an 11-year prison sentence, was hospitalized on Tuesday (November 29th), her supporters said. “Maria was hospitalized in intensive care in Gomel”in the south-east of the country, wrote in a press release the press service of Viktor Babaryko, another opponent of power also imprisoned, to whom she is close.
According to the document, the 40-year-old opponent was admitted to a surgical care unit on Monday, before being transferred to the intensive care unit. This hospitalization comes as, last week, the press service of Mr. Babaryko had announced that the musician had been placed in solitary confinement, under the pretext of a ” rude behaviour “. Her lawyer had been denied the right to see her.
“Terrible news! Our dear Masha [diminutif de Maria]we all hope you are doing well”Belarusian opposition leader in exile Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya wrote on Telegram on Tuesday.
Attempted expulsion from the country and trial behind closed doors
Mme Kolesnikova was one of three women propelled to head the summer 2020 protest movement, along with Mme Tikhanovskaïa – presidential candidate in place of her imprisoned husband – and Veronika Tsepkalo. The latter two have since fled the country under pressure from the authorities.
A major figure in protest against the Belarusian regime since then, Maria Kolesnikova was imprisoned in September 2020 after having resisted a deportation attempt in spectacular fashion. According to her relatives, the Belarusian special services (KGB) abducted her, then put a bag over her head to take her to the Ukrainian border. Refusing to leave her country, she jumped out of a window and tore up her passport, which prevented her deportation.
Following a trial behind closed doors, Mr.me Kolesnikova was then sentenced in September 2021 to eleven years in prison. The Belarusian court found her guilty of “conspiracy to seize power”of“calls for actions undermining national security” and of “creation of an extremist formation”. His co-defendant, lawyer Maksim Znak, had been given a ten-year sentence in a high-security penal colony.
They both worked for Viktor Babaryko, rival of the Belarusian president, sentenced in 2021 to fourteen years in prison for fraud, a case he denounced as political. They also belonged to the seven-member Coordination Council set up by the opposition after the August 2020 presidential election to try to organize a peaceful transition after more than twenty years in power by Alexander Lukashenko.
A few weeks after Maria Kolesnikova’s conviction, the Council of Europe awarded her the 2021 Vaclav-Havel Human Rights Prize, hailing her ” courage “. The protest movement, which had brought together tens of thousands of demonstrators in the summer of 2020, had been gradually subdued, with thousands of arrests, forced exiles and imprisonment of opponents, media officials and NGO.
The West has adopted several sets of sanctions against the Minsk regime, which, on the other hand, enjoys the unwavering support of Moscow. An ally of Russia, Mr. Lukashenko’s Belarus served as a rear base for Russian troops for their offensive against Ukraine at the end of February.