Amnesty International Stands Up For Belarusian Political Prisoner Danuta Perednya

The student was sentenced to 6.5 years in jail for criticizing the war in Ukraine and Lukashenka.

Commenting on reports that a court in Belarus sentenced 20-year-old Mogilev student Danuta Perednya to 6.5 years in prison for reposting a message criticizing the war in Ukraine and Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka's role in it, Marie Struthers, Amnesty International's director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, says:

"The Belarusian authorities are increasingly suppressing any dissent and continue to support Russia in its aggression against Ukraine. Danuta Perednya and all those in Belarus who have been convicted for peaceful expression of opinion and speaking out against the war should be immediately released and all charges against them dropped.

On July 5th, the court of Kirovsk of Mahiliou region sentenced Danuta Perednya, former student of Mogilev State University named after A. Kuleshov, to six and a half years in a colony. She was accused of 'causing damage to the national interests of Belarus' (part 3 of article 361 of the Criminal Code) and 'insulting the President' (part 1 of article 368), i.e. for acts that shouldn't be criminalized in the first place.

On 28 February, Belarusian authorities detained Perednya for reposting a text criticizing Vladimir Putin and Aliaksandr Lukashenka for the war in Ukraine in a Mogilev chat room. Being an excellent student, she was immediately expelled from the university. On June 10, while she was in custody, the State Security Committee of Belarus put her on the official list of "persons involved in terrorist activities".

Since the beginning of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, more than a thousand people have been detained in Belarus, a Russian ally, for expressing their anti-war views.