Ales Bialiatski

Ales Bialiatski is a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the chairman and founder of the Viasna Human Rights Center, and former vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights. He has been imprisoned in Belarus multiple times due to his activism. Most recently, Ales was sentenced to 10 years in prison on bogus charges, after a trial condemned as a “sham” by the United States and the European Union. His imprisonment is widely viewed as politically motivated, intended to silence his work in defending human rights and documenting abuses by the Belarusian government. For instance, in May 2024, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found his detention to be arbitrary and in violation of international law. He remains imprisoned under deplorable conditions, including solitary confinement and deprivation of medicine, as his health deteriorates.