Watchdog

MINSK -- A pensioner from the southeastern Belarusian city of Homel has received three days in jail for wearing a T-shirt bearing a slogan demanding President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's resignation.

Yury Rubtsou was found guilty on November 4 of not following police instructions.

He took part in a march to commemorate ancestors held in a Minsk suburb on November 3.

Rubstou's T-shirt carried a slogan that said, "Lukashenka, Go Away!"

Police arrested him after he ignored their request to take off the T-shirt.

At the trial in Minsk, Rubtsou recalled that Lukashenka had said in a televised statement that he would leave his post if the Belarusian people requested it.

"So, I have asked him to resign," Rubtsou said in his defense.

Lukashenka, who has been running the country since 1994, has been criticized by human rights organizations for his authoritarian rule.

Four Iranian political prisoners, including prominent human right lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, have begun a hunger strike to protest prison conditions.

Soltani's daughter Maede told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that the prisoners started the hunger strike on Soltani's 60th birthday on November 2 to protest a lack of medical care for dissidents at Tehran's Evin Prison and other jails.

Soltani co-founded the Center for Human Rights Defenders with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Soltani was arrested in 2011.

He was sentenced to 13 years in prison on various charges, including co-founding the rights group and propagating against the state.

In 2009, he received the Nuremberg International Human Rights Award, which included 15,000 euros ($20,600) in prize money.

His charges also include receiving "illegitimate" money in reference to that prize money.

With reporting by AP