Concerns about the imprisonment of Nobel laureate Alice Bialiatsky in Belarus: ‘All contact lost’ | outside

“We’ve lost all contact,” friend and fellow activist Frank Villacorca told CNN Thursday. A senior adviser to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya added that Bialiatsky may have been transferred to one of the harshest prisons in Belarus. “We will try to find out what is happening to him and if he is still alive,” he said.

Viacorca responded to an interview published by The Associated Press on Wednesday with Bialiatsky’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk. “The authorities are creating unbearable conditions for Ales and keeping him in strict media isolation,” she said. “He has not received any letter from him for a month, and he has not received my letters.”

Tsikhanouskaya also called on the international community to take action, saying Bialiatsky’s treatment by the Belarusian authorities was “inhuman”. “The continued inhumane treatment of Nobel Laureate Alice Bialiatsky and other political prisoners in Belarus cannot be tolerated,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a tweet. Many of the strongest voices calling for freedom have been silenced. So we have to be louder. The international community must act now! “

On May 21, more than 100 Nobel laureates in an open letter jointly with the writers’ association Pen International called for the activist’s release. “We, the undersigned Nobel laureates, call for the immediate and unconditional release of fellow writer, human rights activist, Nobel laureate and PEN member Alice Bialiatsky,” the letter read. They wrote: “The world deserves to hear Bialiatsky’s voice.”

On March 3, Bialiatsky was sentenced to 10 years in a maximum security penal colony for smuggling money and violating public order.