WARSAW – Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has pardoned 30 people convicted for anti-government protests, his office said yesterday, four years after mass demonstrations gripped the Russian-allied country. 

Minsk carried out a massive crackdown on dissent after suppressing 2020 protests against Lukashenko, jailing hundreds of people and spurring a new wave of emigration. 

“Among the pardoned are seven women and 23 men. Most are parents of underage (children) and small children,” Lukashenko’s office said in a statement, calling the move a “ humane gesture “. It did not give details on who the people were.

There are 1 371 political prisoners in Belarus, according to rights group Viasna. Thousands of others have left the country. Last week, Belarus’s exiled opposition said that protest leader Maria Kolesnikova was being subjected to a “ slow murder “ in the prison where she is being held in eastern Belarus, saying she is kept in constant isolation.

Protests erupted in Belarus in 2020 in the run-up to and in the wake of a contested election that saw Lukashenko claim a landslide victory. 

The opposition decried the result as fraudulent. Repressive for years, Minsk doubled down after the protests and became even more isolated after 2022, when it allowed Russia to use its territory to invade Ukraine. The pardoning yesterday came after Lukashenko, in power since 1994 pardoned five political prisoners in July. 

-Nampa/AFP