Belarus filmmaker pleads with Serbia not to send him back

A Belarusian filmmaker and opposition activist, Andrei Gnyot, has made a last, passionate enchantment to a court docket in Serbia to not extradite him to Minsk, warning that he faces “inevitable torture and inevitable dying” if he’s despatched again.

The activist urged the panel of three judges to “please, save my life”, describing Belarus below Alexander Lukashenko as a “dictatorial system which tortures and kills”.

He was arrested when he flew into Belgrade final October, on a world arrest warrant issued by Belarus for alleged tax evasion.

Mr Gnyot says he’s being pursued due to his politics.

In his deal with, seen by the BBC, Mr Gnyot mentioned he was an extraordinary one that had stood up in opposition to authoritarian rule and was now being made to pay the value.

The Court of Appeal in Belgrade now has 30 days to ship its ruling in writing, at which level the activist might be faraway from the nation instantly.

Mr Gnyot, who describes himself as a “journalist, movie director, political activist and political prisoner”, took half within the big opposition protests that swept Belarus in August 2020 after claims of mass vote-rigging within the presidential elections.

He filmed the rallies and shared the fabric.

He additionally co-founded a bunch often known as SOS.BY which united outstanding athletes talking out in opposition to the Belarus chief’s authoritarian rule.

Mr Gnyot helped them make quick, highly effective movies, to ship their message. He was additionally instrumental, he says, in getting a significant ice hockey match relocated from Belarus, depriving Alexander Lukashenko of a prestigious worldwide occasion and his favorite sport.

An Interpol pink discover that was issued in opposition to him has since been withdrawn, after Mr Gnyot’s attorneys say they defined the politics. He denies any wrongdoing.

But Serbia continues to be contemplating the extradition request from Belarus.

A lawyer for Mr Gnyot identified that Belarus has an extended file of urgent financial expenses in opposition to opponents. Ales Bialiatski, the jailed Nobel Laureate and veteran human rights activist from the group Viasna, was additionally detained initially for tax evasion.

“We know what a politically motivated case appears to be like like,” Maria Hudzilina advised the BBC, recounting the proof she had seen in Mr Gnyot’s case. “As a lawyer, I mentioned sure. This is politically motivated. We have all of the arguments, all of the paperwork for this.”

Her worry, and that of her shopper, is that in Belarus the activist can be charged with extremism, like different opposition figures earlier than him.

Viasna presently lists lots of of political prisoners there. Many of probably the most outstanding have been held “incommunicado”, allowed no contact in any respect with attorneys or kin for a number of years. Arrests of political opponents haven’t stopped.

The threat doesn’t finish overseas.

Hundreds of 1000’s of individuals have fled Belarus for the reason that 2020 protests, which had been finally crushed brutally by police.

Many have since been tried and convicted in absentia for his or her function within the rallies. That means all future journey is restricted, to keep away from detention in nations that preserve ties to Minsk or Moscow.

Mr Gnyot has already spent seven months in jail in Belgrade, solely allowed out of his cell for 2 hours a day. Since then he has been below home arrest, “locked in my house, completely alone, for 23 hours a day”, as he advised the court docket.

On the eve of his last listening to, dozens of outstanding fellow movie makers and artists – together with Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland and Nobel prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich – signed an open letter to Serbian authorities, urging them to not extradite him.

But his software in opposition to extradition has already been rejected twice by earlier courts. His attorneys say the judges there failed to understand the truth of political oppression in Belarus.

Ending his last speech, Andrei Gnyot advised the panel of judges that he was being pursued in Minsk as a result of he had fought “in opposition to the falsification of elections, in opposition to violence and the violation of the legal guidelines and structure. That is what Lukashenko throws folks in jail for”.

He urged them to not make a “small mistake” which he warned would turn into “a giant stain” on the historical past of contemporary Serbia, that might not then be eliminated.