Belarus:

Ales Bialiatski, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist, has been placed in solitary confinement at his Belarusian prison. His wife Natalia Pinchuk announced on Tuesday, that the 61-year-old Bialiatski is serving a 10-year term despite his severe diseases, and prison officials have tightened conditions for him. “Effectively, it’s a prison inside prison,” she said.

Bialiatski's attorney was denied access to speak with prison officials after being moved to solitary confinement because of alleged disciplinary violations. A prominent advocate for human rights in Belarus and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, Bialiatski was found guilty in March of sponsoring acts that contravened public order and smuggling, an accusation he denied. Bialiatski was convicted with three other associates.

He has been kept at the repeat offender colony at Gorki. The facility is notorious for mistreating its prisoners and making them put in a lot of overtime. The arrests of Bialiatski and his associates were prompted by large-scale demonstrations against a 2020 election that the opposition and many in the West saw as a fraud that prolonged autocratic President Alexander Lukashenko's tenure. These were the largest-ever protests in Belarus. Over 35,000 individuals were taken into custody and thousands of people were beaten by police.

Belarus has been led by Lukashenko, a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, since 1994. Bialiatski shared the 2022 Nobel Prize with the Ukrainian Centre for Civil Liberties and Memorial, a well-known human rights organization in Russia. He founded the Human Rights Centre Viasna, the most well-known human rights institution in Belarus. The Belarusian authorities have designated it as a “radical group.”

Limitations on prison meals, walks, and food delivery may result from Bialiatski's move to solitary confinement.