May 6, Pozirk. Authorities have filed criminal charges against Minsk-based 78-year-old opposition activist Nina Bahinskaja, accusing her of several counts of demonstrating without permission from the city government, the Viasna Human Rights Center reports.
The charges are linked to her wearing a white-red-white badge in public and demonstrating banned opposition symbols in the streets of Minsk in 2024.
The trial will take place at by Minsk’s Peršamajski District Court, but the date is unknown.
Bahinskaja 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 uprising.
In October 2020, Alaksandr Łukašenka told officials not to detain Bahinskaja, describing her as a person of conviction. If she is “removed from the squares,” he said, “there will be no opposition.” Nevertheless, Bahinskaja has been detained and fined many times since 2020.
Authorities also confiscated a land plot from her over unpaid fines.
Last year, she was convicted of unsanctioned picketing three times and fined 7,200 rubels ($2,375).
