MINSK – Nine hundred and forty-four people are implicated in criminal cases in Belarus for participating in the protests that followed the August 2020 presidential election, the Belarusian Prosecutor General’s Office said on May 21.
“Prosecutors have now sent to courts 667 criminal cases against 944 people based on facts of their participation in riots, the commission of actions that massively violated public order and were associated with non-fulfilment of lawful demands made by the authorities, violence and threat to use it against law enforcement officers, public insults against them, vandalizing property by writing on it, hooliganism, and desecration of state symbols,” the report said.
According to the agency, 682 people have now been convicted.
“Law enforcement agencies continue actively finding suspects and solving crimes against public safety and law and order that have taken place since August 2020,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
The Prosecutor General’s Office said their staff monitor the internet daily “to find indications of violations of law, destructive and false information, insults and threats against the country’s top officials, law enforcement officials, and officials from other bodies of state authority.”
Belarus has seen continuous protests against the official results of the presidential election that took place on August 9, 2020. The authorities declared incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko the winner. Lukashenko has been in office since 1994. The opposition does not recognize the results of the presidential election, saying the election was rigged. The protesters demanded Lukashenko’s resignation, the release of political prisoners, and a new election. Now, the protests have almost ceased after being fiercely dispersed by Belarusian law enforcement officers; they are now sporadic and only happen locally.
