- Name: Maria Kolesnikova
- Position: Opposition leader, musician and activist
- Deprived of liberty from: September 7th, 2020
- Judgment: 11 years of imprisonment
- Country: Belarus
- Place of confinement: Penal Colony No. 4 in Homieĺ
- Health condition: Severe health conditions
- Torture complaint: Subject to inhumane prison conditions
Kolesnikova is a Belarusian opposition leader, musician, and a cultural and political activist. In 2020, she became especially known for participating in the campaign of the presidential elections in Belarus, she joined the campaign of the banker Viktor Babariko.
When Viktor Babariko was arrested in July 2020, Kolésnikova took a step forward and publicly joined the campaign of Svetlana Tijanóvskaya and Veronika Tsepkalo participating in their rallies. The photo of the three women became the symbol of the opposition campaign.
She was one of the leaders of the large-scale demonstrations of 2020 against the Belarusian regime, when President Alexander Lukashenko won an election that the international community considered fraudulent. She was detained in September 2020 after resisting an attempt to expel her from her country by breaking her own passport.
Kolesnikova, the Sakharov Prize of the European Parliament for freedom of conscience in 2020, was sentenced in September 2021 to 11 years in prison after being found guilty of “conspiring to take power,” “calling for actions that undermine national security” and “creating an extremist group.”
In November of 2022 she was admitted in intensive care after having been operated on, in the Gomel Clinical Hospital. Informants assure that her condition is stable, although serious, and shows some improvement.
Kolesnikova’s father “managed to see his daughter and confirmed that she is alive” during a 10-minute visit, the statement said.
Sponsors
Name : Javier Cremades
Position: President of the World Jurist Association (WJA)
Obsevations
Javier Cremades is a prestigious Spanish lawyer, and President of the World Jurist Association, the most notorious international association of jurists. His performance as president of several organizations such as the International Financial Litigation Network, Eurolatam Lex (Ellex), and authorship of numerous of academic publications on Public Law and Private Law, was recognized by Forbes Magazine by naming him Spain’s Lawyer of the Year in 2015.
