Mikalai Autukhovich among most well-known political prisoners of the world

A Belarusian Mikalai Autukhovich is on the list of 15 world’s most prominent political prisoners of the world according to Freedom House.

On the Human Rights Day and on the day of honouring in absentia the Nobel peace prize winner, a Chinese dissident and intellectual, www.foreignpolicy.com website has published a list of the world’s most important imprisoned dissidents. The list has been created by the human rights organisation Freedom House. It is said in the article that Liu Xiaobo is just one example of hundreds of innocent men and women around the world who are currently imprisoned because of their political views or for their defense of human rights, Radio Svaboda informs.

The list named “Planet Gulag” includes 15 countries: Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, Vietnam, Gambia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Cuba, North Korea, Russia, Rwanda, Syria, Uzbekistan.

In the part dedicated to Mikalai Autukhovich, it is noted that for the first time this prominent businessman and pro-democracy activist was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to three-and-a-half years' imprisonment in October 2005. Although he was one of six political prisoners released in 2008 following a series of harsh sanctions passed by the United States and the European Union, he was arrested for the second time in 2009 and sentenced to five years in prison for weapons possession, a charge that his supporters claim was fabricated. His health has deteriorated significantly while in prison as a result of numerous hunger strikes and the lack of adequate medical attention. According to Freedom House, Avtuhovich has called for democratic change in Belarus and continues to urge his compatriots to speak out against Alyaksandr Lukashenka's regime.