The human rights activist committed suicide in protest against the sentence

In the city of Soligorsk, the Minsk Region of Belarus on Monday, human rights activist Yana Polyakova took place on Monday. She committed suicide on Saturday, disagreing with the decision of the City Court of Soligorsk, who sentenced her to two and a half years in a penal colony. According to Kommersant, the human rights activist was convicted of a “false denunciation”. The court ruled that she slandered the policemen, saying that they had beaten her.

With a statement about the beating at the local police department to the prosecutor's office of Soligorsk Polyakov applied in September last year. The human rights activist said that the district police captain Viktor Pugachev almost broke her hand. Polyakova claimed that the captain pursued her for the fact that during the election campaign in the elections to the parliament of Belarus she collected signatures for the candidacy of Olga Kozulina, the daughter of the former presidential candidate Alexander Kozulin. In confirmation of her statement, Polyakova submitted a certificate of damage to the emergency room to the prosecutor's office.

The Soligorsk Prosecutor's Office, when checking the application, "did not find confirming facts." The results of the audit were approved by the Minsk Regional Prosecutor's Office. In January, Pugachev demanded that Polyakov be prosecuted for slander. Shortly before the trial in February, Polyakova fell into intensive care in a coma. At the same time, doctors brought her to her senses, but refused hospitalization.

According to Mrs. Polyakova’s mother, she asked to postpone the process in connection with the poor condition of her daughter, but was refused. On March 3, the judge of the Soligorsky District Court Viktor Buravtsov found the human rights activist guilty of knowingly false denunciation (part 2 of Article 400 of the Criminal Code of Belarus) and sentenced to two years and six months restriction of freedom in a colony-settlement, and also obliged the convicted to compensate Pugachev in the amount of 1 million Belarusian rubles (about 12 thousand Russian rubles).

Friends of the human rights activist argue that not only the sentence could push her to the idea of ​​suicide. A close friend of the deceased human rights activist Valery Schukin said that the “last straw” was an article in the central edition, which Polyakova considered it offensive to himself.

According to the Belarusian Agency "Belapan", the prosecutor's office of the Soligorsky district conducts a check on the suicide of the human rights activist.