May 30, Pozirk. Several diplomats accredited in Belarus gathered in front of the Saviecki District Court in Minsk to express solidarity with veteran opposition activist Nina Bahinskaja as she stands trial for wearing a white-red-white badge and demonstrating banned opposition symbols in public.
Authorities accuse her of repeated violations of the order of holding mass events. The 78-year-old woman may face up to three years of restricted freedom or the same term in prison if convicted.
The German embassy in Belarus described the charges against Bahinskaja as “unfair and politically motivated.”
The woman has been active in the opposition movement since the 1980s. She kept staging one-woman protests in Minsk even after the crackdown on the 2020 postelection protests and has been detained and fined many times over the past five years.
Last year, she was convicted of unsanctioned picketing three times and fined 7,200 rubels ($2,375). Authorities also confiscated a land plot from her over unpaid fines.
When Bahinskaja took to the street with an opposition flag in 2022, the German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost described her as “the last Belarusian demonstrator.”
