Ales Byalyatski - 49th birthday in prison
The head of the human right center "Viasna" and the Vice-President of the International Human Rights Federation is forced to celebrate his birthday in prison.
He was arrested on August 4 in Minsk after the searches in his apartment and at the office of "Viasna", and placed in custody. On August 12, Ales Byalyatski was accused of tax evasion in especially big scope. The information about Byalyatski's bank accounts in Lithuania and Poland became the ground for starting a criminal case. The Belarusian authorities obtained this information from the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice and Poland's General public prosecutor's office in the framework of the agreement on legal assistance.
Ales Byalyatski is famous not only for his human rights activities, but as a writer as well. In 1986, he created a literature association "Tutejshyja", and in the years 1989-1998 he worked as a director of the Literature Museum of Maksim Bahdanovich.
