Virginia Tech student from Belarus sentenced to 10 years in absentia

The Virginia Tech doctoral student who has been on trial in her native Belarus, charged in absentia with plotting to overthrow the government, has been found guilty.

Katsiaryna Shmatsina got the word Monday: She’s been sentenced to 10 years in prison.

Fortunately for her, she’s in Alexandria. But the conviction means she can’t go home again, or at least as long as the authoritarian government of Alexander Lukashenko, often called “Europe’s last dictator,” is in place.

I wrote about her case last week; she’s one of 20 Belarusian scholars targeted by the regime. Those who follow the politics of the eastern European nation between Russia and Poland have said the case is an example of the regime trying to silence dissent by cutting these analysts, many of them relatively young, from their homeland. Shmatsina is 32.

She said some of her fellow academics were also sentenced to 10 years in prison, others 11 years, and one man 11 years and six months. “Why someone got more than the other, is not clear,” Shmatsina told me by email. 

The Belarusian news site Euroradio reports that the 20 defendants were “found guilty of  ‘conspiracy to seize state power by unconstitutional means,’ ‘joining an extremist formation for the purpose of committing extremist crimes,’ ‘aiding public calls for actions aimed at harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus’ as well as ‘inciting social hostility and hostility.’”

This was not a trial in any Western sense. The defendants weren’t allowed to see the case files against them; their government-appointed lawyers didn’t contact them. “The Minsk regional court ignored our emails as well,” Shmatsina said. “We haven’t received any replies whatsoever.”

Viasna, the oldest human rights group in Belarus, estimates there are at least 1,410 political prisoners in the country. Shmatsina believes the number is two to three times higher. “Some prisoners are reluctant to be labeled as ‘politically motivated.’ It creates additional pressure for them and their families,” she said. “The most recent tragic trend is that a public mentioning of a political prisoner in the independent media, or at a panel discussion — often leads to worsening conditions in jail, as retaliation. A few years ago, it was the opposite — bringing more visibility to those behind the bars meant that the prison administration would be more careful dealing with them, as those prisoners seemed to be ‘more important.’”

Shmatsina has applied for political asylum in the United States and was recently told her case will be processed within four months. “This is a very good timeline,” she said. “Sometimes people wait years to get an interview to move forward with the asylum claim.”

After my initial column ran, the congressional offices of Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, whose district includes Virginia Tech, and Rep. Don Beyer, D-Alexandria, where Shmatsina lives, both reached out to offer help with her case. So did a Washington, D.C.-based law firm, which offered its services pro bono.