Maryya Kalesnikava, a leading opposition activist in Belarus who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in September 2021, has been transferred to a hospital and is currently being treated for unspecified illness in an intensive care unit.
Viktar Babaryka, a would-be Belarusian presidential candidate in 2020, wrote on Telegram on November 29 that Kalesnikava was rushed to a hospital in the city of Homel, 300 kilometers southeast of the capital, Minsk, a day earlier.
Kalesnikava's father, Alyaksandr Kalesnikav, said she underwent surgery and was in serious but stable condition. Her doctors didn’t share her diagnosis or any other details with him about the surgery, he said.
Babaryka's press service also said that Kalesnikava had undergone surgery. It said last week that she had been put in solitary confinement for "impolite behavior."
Kalesnikava’s lawyer, Uladzimer Pylchanka, told RFE/RL that the hospital confirmed to him that his client is being treated in the facility, adding that he was not allowed to see Kalesnikava due to "the absence of the convict's request."
Pylchanka is waiting for the official response to his letter to the Prosecutor-General's Office demanding to see his client.
Kalesnikava, together with Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Veranika Tsapkala, formed a trio of women who led historic demonstrations against Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka in 2020.
Kalesnikava, 40, is the only one of the three still in the country and has been imprisoned over her role in the mass protests for more than two years.
Tsikhanouskaya, who moved to Lithuania after Lukashenka claimed victory in the presidential election that many people in Belarus believe she won, said the news that Kalesnikava had been hospitalized was worrying.
"We need information about her condition & must assure that she gets proper help," she said on Twitter.
It remains unclear why Kalesnikava was transferred to a hospital and what she is being treated for. Before being rushed to the hospital, Kalesnikava was in punitive solitary confinement on unspecified charges.
Kalesnikava and another opposition figure, Maksim Znak, were sentenced to prison terms of 11 and 10 years, respectively, on September 6, 2021, after being found guilty on charges of conspiracy to seize power, calls for action to damage national security, and calls for actions damaging national security by trying to create an extremist group. Both had pleaded not guilty and rejected the charges.
Kalesnikava was a coordinator of Babaryka’s campaign before he was excluded from running. Babaryka, the former head of Belgazprombank, was arrested weeks before the presidential election. Kalesnikava then joined Tsikhanouskaya's support group and became a prominent leader of protests demanding the resignation of Lukashenka, who was officially announced the winner of the election.
Kalesnikava has been in custody since masked men snatched her and two male colleagues from the streets of Minsk on September 7, 2020. The three were driven early the next day to the border, where authorities told them to cross into Ukraine.
Security officers reportedly failed to deport Kalesnikava because she ripped her passport into pieces after they arrived in the no-man’s-land between Belarus and Ukraine. Her two associates entered Ukraine, but with no valid passport, Kalesnikava remained in the country and was subsequently arrested.
Human rights watchdogs in Belarus have recognized Kalesnikava and two other associates also being detained as political prisoners and have demanded their immediate release.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called her prosecution a "politically motivated conviction" on "bogus" charges.
Kalesnikava last year won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize awarded annually by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to honor "outstanding" civil society action in the defense of human rights.