#FreeViasna: Latest news about jailed Viasna human rights defenders
On September 17, #FreeViasna campaign of solidarity with the imprisoned Viasna members was launched. Here’s the latest news about them.
Nobel Peace Conference to be held in Oslo
“The Nobel Peace Conference 2023 celebrates the achievements made by human rights defenders, identifies the risks they are facing and calls for action to support their work,” reports Nobel Peace Centr.
The conference will take place in Oslo at the National Museum. Online participation is also available. The conference speakers include Nobel Peace Prize laureates Oleksandra Matviichuk (Center for Civil Liberties), Yan Rachinsky (Memorial), and Natallia Pinchuk, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Viasna leader Ales Bialiatski.
The Sunflower Declaration will be presented during the conference. The Declaration was created by the Nobel Peace Center and the Nobel Peace Prize winners in 2022—representatives of Viasna (on behalf of Ales Bialiatski), Memorial, and the Center for Civil Liberties.
The Sunflower Declaration is a set of concrete recommendations to improve the protection of human rights defenders and their work environment. The Declaration intends to draw further global attention to the Nobel Peace Prize to help increase respect and support for the peaceful work of human rights defenders.
Marfa Rabkova and Valiantsin Stefanovic's drawings that they sent from prison have appeared online
The drawings of political prisoners and human rights defenders Marfa Rabkova (available here) and Valiantsin Stefanovic (available here) have appeared on the PrisonArt website.
Valiantsin Stefanovic portrayed cats, including the famous KISS-UN-BAND:
One of Marfa Rabkova's drawings depicts a stork:
The symbolic godmother and 100 Bundestag members sent an open appeal to the Belarusian authorities
Agnieszka Brugger, German MP for the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group and Marfa Rabkova's godparent as part of Libereco's solidarity campaign #WeStandBYyou, sent an open appeal to the Belarusian authorities. A hundred German MPs supported the appeal and signed it.
Agnieszka Brugger draws attention to the unfair sentence imposed on Marfa Rabkova, who received 14 years and nine months in prison for her work in Viasna as a volunteer coordinator, as well as for documenting the facts of torture and ill-treatment by security forces against peaceful demonstrators in Belarus.
There has been no news recently about the political prisoner human rights defender Uladzimir Labkovich and volunteer Andrei Chapiuk.
How to support Viasna?
We encourage you to share the stories of Viasna members and other political prisoners with your family, friends, and colleagues, and simply on social media using the hashtag #FreeViasna. Let’s show our solidarity and support political prisoners in Belarus!
In addition, you can sign the petition for releasing Viasna leaders and all political prisoners of Belarus, become our patron on Patreon or support us with a single donation.
You can find more news about imprisoned Viasna human rights defenders on the website freeviasna.org
