Journalist in Belarus sentenced to six years in prison on July 26, ABC news has reported.
At the trial held in Grodno, western Belarus, 45-year-old Pavel Mazheyka was found guilty of "participating in extremist activities" for covering the activities of the political opposition. He was accused of working for news agencies, including the television channel "Belsat," which broadcasts in Belarusian from its base in neighboring Poland. The Belarusian authorities have labeled "Belsat" as "extremist."
Lawyer Yuliya Yurhilevich was also sentenced to six years in prison after being accused of passing information about Belarusian political prisoners, including the dissident artist Ales Pushkin, who died in a Belarusian prison earlier this month, to Mazheyka.
Yurhilevich, 42, who had nearly 18 years of legal practice and defended human rights activists, had her license revoked in February 2022.
"This is not a legal process, but a theater of the absurd - a journalist and a lawyer are being tried for disseminating information," said Mazheyka during the trial.
Mazheyka is a well-known figure in Belarus. In 2002, he was sentenced to two years in prison for "slander against the president" before becoming the press secretary for presidential candidate Alexander Milinkevich in 2006.
Since then, Mazheyka has worked for leading independent news outlets in Belarus and Poland, hosting several shows and serving as the executive director of the "Belsat" channel.
The journalist spent 11 months behind bars since his arrest in August 2022. Earlier, Mazheyka stated that he was brutally beaten by law enforcement officers during the arrest and accused them of attempting to gouge out his eye.
Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya is among those who condemned the sentence for Mazheyka and Yurhilevich.
"Today, brave journalist Pavel Mazheyka and lawyer Yuliya Yurhilevich were sentenced to six years in prison for another mockery of justice in Belarus. This is a blatant attack on those who dare to speak the truth. Journalists and lawyers are persecuted for practicing their profession" she said.
In August 2020 president Alexander Lukashenko was re-elected for a sixth term. Following the elections, which were rejected by the opposition and the West as fraudulent, Belarus saw mass protests, some of which were attended by over 100,000 people.
According to the human rights center "Viasna," there are currently about 1481 recognized political prisoners in Belarus.
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