Foundation raising money for gravestone for late political prisoner

March 11, Pozirk. The BYSOL Foundation is raising funds for a gravestone for Ihar Lednik, a political prisoner who died in captivity.

The gravestone costs €2,000, and you can donate here. Lednik was buried on February 22 in Barysaŭ, Minsk region.

The BYSOL Foundation has repeatedly emphasized that it is unsafe to donate to political prisoners from Belarus. The Ministry of Internal Affairs can track money transfers from Belarusian accounts and prosecute donors.

Lednik died on February 20 at a Minsk district hospital, where he was taken from the Babrujsk penal colony. He was a Group II disabled person, and died of heart failure.

Police arrested him in April 2022. Five months later, Judge Taćciana Šocik sentenced Lednik to three years in prison for allegedly libeling the head of state in an article that he wrote for the Belarusian Social Democratic Party’s journal.

In July 2022, the Barysaŭ District Court declared Lednik’s Facebook page extremist content.

Lednik’s death brought the death toll of Belarusian political prisoners to five. Vadzim Chraśko died at a penal colony in January 2024. Vitold Ašurak died in May 2022; Mikałaj Klimovič, in May 2023. Artist Aleś Puškin died in July 2023 after being hospitalized from a Hrodna prison.