One of the journalists, behind bars in Belarus for covering anti-government rallies, refused to seek a pardon despite his heart condition. Another, jailed in Georgia, defiantly stood up at her trial and urged the opposition to keep protesting \u201cuntil victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, they were honored with the prize named for the late Andrei Sakharov,<\/a> one of the Soviet Union\u2019s most prominent human rights activists and symbols of courage.<\/p>\n Andrzej Poczobut of Belarus<\/a> and Mzia Amaghlobeli of Georgia<\/a> received the European Parliament’s most prestigious human rights award after they were imprisoned on “trumped-up charges simply for doing their work and for speaking out against injustice,\u201d said the body’s president, Roberta Metsola.<\/p>\n “Their courage has made them symbols of the struggle for freedom and democracy,\u201d Metsola said.<\/p>\n Here is what to know about the winners:<\/p>\n Poczobut, a leader of the Polish minority in Belarus and a journalist for Poland\u2019s leading newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, was arrested in his western hometown of Grodno in March 2021.<\/p>\n In February 2023, he was convicted on accusations of \u201cdamaging national security\u201d for his coverage of the mass demonstrations in 2020 in the capital of Minsk and elsewhere following the disputed election that gave Belarus’ authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in office.<\/p>\n Poczobut had stayed in Belarus despite the subsequent crackdown in which 65,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten by police, and tens of thousands fled abroad.<\/p>\n He was sentenced to eight years in prison on the charges that human rights activists denounced as politically motivated.<\/p>\n Poczobut, 52, has staunchly refused to plead guilty to the charges or ask Lukashenko for a pardon. In a letter from prison, Poczobut wrote that \u201cfreedom is not a place but is within a person.\u201d<\/p>\n He was ordered to serve his sentence in one of the harshest maximum-security penal colonies, which is located in the eastern city of Novopolotsk. He suffers from a heart ailment, hypertension and vision problems, and reportedly underwent surgery at a prison hospital to remove skin ulcers.<\/p>\n According to the Viasna human rights group, Poczobut was deprived of needed medications and was repeatedly put in solitary confinement for refusing to do work he could not perform due to his health.<\/p>\n He\u2019s in a solitary confinement now, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists. He also was held incommunicado for eight months, denying him a chance to see his wife, Oksana, and their daughter and son.<\/p>\n \u201cThe authorities are taking revenge on Poczobut for uncompromisingly speaking the truth about the peaceful protests in Belarus and the brutal terror of the Lukashenko regime,\u201d exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n She said his health is deteriorating every day, and “without proper medical care, he is simply slowly dying.\u201d<\/p>\n Tsikhanouskaya praised the Sakharov Prize as recognizing the winners’ courage and a \u201cpowerful gesture of solidarity with the people of Belarus and Georgia in their struggle for freedom and a European future.\u201d<\/p>\n She told AP the award “is a clear signal to all dictators: journalists cannot be silenced.\u201d<\/p>\n Andrei Bastunets, head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, voiced hope the award will contribute to Poczobut’s release.<\/p>\n \u201cThis award is very important to all 30 imprisoned Belarusian journalists who are sacrificing their lives for the opportunity to report the truth about the catastrophic situation in Belarus, which has become a black hole in Europe,\u201d Bastunets said.<\/p>\n