On 25 September Ales Bialiatski turns 64. It is his first birthday in freedom since his release on 13 December 2025. He is the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a Belarusian human rights defender, and the founder and head of the Viasna Human Rights Centre. He was born on 25 September 1962 in Vyartsilya, in Karelia.
He spent the five birthdays before this one behind bars, from 2021 through 2025. Belsat counted 1,613 days in detention.
Ten years he did not accept
Bialiatski was detained on 14 July 2021, the same day as his Viasna colleagues Valiantsin Stefanovich and Uladzimir Labkovich. On 3 March 2023 judge Maryna Zapasnik of Minsk’s Leninski District Court gave him 10 years in an enhanced-regime colony. The charges were “smuggling by an organised group” (Art. 228, part 4) and financing group actions that grossly violate public order (Art. 342, part 2). Stefanovich was given 9 years, Labkovich 7. Human rights defender Dzmitry Salauyou, who was not in the courtroom, was sentenced in absentia to 8 years. They did not admit guilt. Novaya Gazeta Europe and Viasna reported the case.
It was his second sentence. In 2011 he was imprisoned on a “tax evasion” case and released in 2014. That charge has nothing to do with the 2023 case: the articles are different. On 8 December 2023 the Interior Ministry put Bialiatski, Stefanovich and Labkovich on its “extremist list.”
A prize announced from a jail cell
On 7 October 2022 the Nobel Committee awarded Bialiatski the Peace Prize. He shared it with Russia’s Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties. The prize was divided in three. He was not free: the verdict was still five months away. The committee said plainly that the case against him was political.
Not 3 December, but the 13th. And not home
He was freed on 13 December 2025, not on the 3rd. That day dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka pardoned 123 people. The press service tied the pardon to a request from the US president and to the United States easing sanctions on Belarusian potash. Bialiatski was taken to Lithuania at once. The BBC Russian service named him among those handed over there. The full list is at Nasha Niva.
Uladzimir Labkovich was freed the same day and was among those taken to Ukraine. The list of people brought there was published on 14 December. There was no separate release on the 14th. Valiantsin Stefanovich was still in prison on 13 December. Viasna said at the time that reports of his release were not confirmed. He came out later, on 19 March 2026, and was also taken to Lithuania.