World Courant
Andrei Gnyot
Andrei Gnyot took half in anti-government protests in Belarus 4 years in the past
A Belarusian filmmaker and opposition activist, Andrei Gnyot, has made a closing, impassioned attraction to a court docket in Serbia to not extradite him to Minsk, warning that he faces “inevitable torture and dying” if he’s despatched again.
The activist urged the three-judge panel to “please save my life”, describing Belarus underneath Alexander Lukashenko as a “dictatorial system that tortures and kills”.
He was arrested when he flew to Belgrade final October, on a global arrest warrant issued by Belarus for alleged tax evasion.
Mr Gnyot says he’s being prosecuted due to his political beliefs.
In his speech, broadcast by the BBC, Mr Gnyot stated he was an odd one who had stood as much as the authoritarian regime and was now paying the value.
The Belgrade Court docket of Enchantment now has 30 days to problem a written ruling, which might outcome within the activist being instantly deported.
Mr Gnyot, who describes himself as a “journalist, movie director, political activist and political prisoner”, took half within the large opposition protests that swept Belarus in August 2020 following allegations of mass vote fraud within the presidential elections.
He filmed the conferences and shared the fabric.
He additionally co-founded SOS.BY, a gaggle that united distinguished athletes who spoke out in opposition to the authoritarian rule of the Belarusian chief.
Mr. Gnyot helped them make quick, highly effective movies to get their message throughout. He was additionally instrumental, he says, in transferring a serious ice hockey match out of Belarus, depriving Alexander Lukashenko of a prestigious worldwide occasion and his favourite sport.
An Interpol purple discover issued in opposition to him has since been withdrawn after Mr Gnyot’s attorneys stated that they had defined the coverage. He denies any wrongdoing.
Nevertheless, Serbia remains to be contemplating Belarus’ extradition request.
A lawyer for Mr Gnyot identified that Belarus has an extended historical past of submitting financial costs in opposition to opponents. Ales Bialiatski, the imprisoned Nobel Prize winner and veteran human rights activist from the Viasna group, was additionally initially arrested for tax evasion.
“We all know what a politically motivated case seems to be like,” Maria Hudzilina advised the BBC, itemizing the proof she had seen in Mr Gnyot’s case. “As a lawyer, I stated sure. That is politically motivated. Now we have all of the arguments, all of the paperwork for this.”
She and her shopper concern that the activist will likely be charged with extremism in Belarus, like different opposition members earlier than him.
Anadolu Company by way of Getty Photographs
Maria Kolesnikova and Maxim Znak are among the many political prisoners jailed for extremism throughout the 2020 anti-government protests
Viasna at the moment lists a whole lot of political prisoners. Most of the most distinguished have been held “incommunicado” for years, with no contact with attorneys or members of the family. The arrests of political opponents haven’t stopped.
The chance doesn’t cease overseas.
For the reason that protests in 2020, a whole lot of 1000’s of individuals have fled Belarus, which have been ultimately brutally suppressed by the police.
Many have since been tried and convicted in absentia for his or her roles within the protests, that means all future journey is being restricted to forestall them from being detained in international locations with ties to Minsk or Moscow.
Mr Gnyot has already spent seven months in jail in Belgrade, with solely two hours a day trip of his cell. Since then, he has been underneath home arrest, “locked in my home, on their lonesome, for 23 hours a day”, as he advised the court docket.
On the eve of his closing listening to, dozens of distinguished fellow filmmakers and artists – together with Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich – signed an open letter to Serbian authorities urging them to not extradite him.
However his request in opposition to extradition has been rejected twice by earlier courts, together with his attorneys saying the judges there failed to understand the truth of political repression in Belarus.
On the finish of his closing speech, Andrei Gnyot advised the jury that he was being prosecuted in Minsk as a result of he had fought “in opposition to the falsification of elections, in opposition to violence and violation of the legal guidelines and the structure. That’s what Lukashenka throws individuals in jail for.”
He urged them to not make a “small mistake” that he stated would turn into “a giant stain” on the historical past of contemporary Serbia that might not be eliminated afterwards.
