Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “Today, the so-called court in Belarus handed down another sentence to an innocent person. Eduard Babaryka was sentenced to 8 years of imprisonment. He is the person who spent 3 years in pretrial detention – a record term for Belarus. Throughout this time, the regime simply could not come up with a reason why it had detained Eduard and find any evidence of his guilt. After all, the real reason – revenge for his father's desire to participate in elections – is merely an excuse to pass a sentence even in today’s Belarusian courts.
This sentence is for Eduard's father, who never had the chance to appear in court. Eduard has not heard from him since April 26 and does not know whether he is even alive.
Eduard Babaryka, like his father, has been striving to change Belarus and make it a better country. He has launched platforms that allowed Belarusians to support initiatives and projects. Those platforms have provided support to the BY COVID-19 project, financed the publishing of books by our Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, and many other initiatives. I am confident that young and talented people like Eduard Babaryka are the future of the new Belarus. It is these people who are capable of pulling our country out of the crisis the regime has driven it into and making Belarus a prosperous and democratic country”.
