Viasna chairman Ales Bialiatski remains behind the bars

On January 28, the Partyzanski District Court of Minsk considered another appeal of Ales Bialiatski, a political prisoner and chairman of Viasna, against the extension of his detention.

Judge Natallia Dziadkova did not grant the appeal, and thus the human rights defender will remain in pre-trial detention center. There is no information from the process as the trial was held behind closed doors. Almost nothing is known about the progress of the procedure and the investigative activities as well since the lawyers for human rights defenders are under a non-disclosure order. They cannot tell anything even to the relatives of the political prisoners. Human rights defenders also cannot write about the case in their letters, since all mails are undergoing censorship

Ales Bialiatski, his deputy Valiantsin Stefanovich and a lawyer of the organization Uladzimir Labkovich, have been kept in detention for 198 days now for their human rights activities. The human rights defenders are accused of not having registered the Human Rights Center Viasna. The authorities believe that Viasna activists had evaded from recognizing the organization as a tax agent and thus avoided paying taxes on a large scale.

Six months in jail. What is known about three detained Viasna members

What relatives say about the detained Viasna members Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovich, and Uladzimir Labkovich, how they met the New Year without their loved ones, and what the human rights defenders write in their letters–in our story.