Dissident Belarusian author claims father was arrested for reposting article
Fox News
Prominent Belarusian dissident Sasha Filipenko's father has reportedly been sentenced to two weeks in prison for sharing an article by a regime-critical publication online.
Alexander Filipenko was seized by police Thursday in a raid on his apartment and later "given 13 days for reposting some kind of article from Zerkalo," his son Sasha Filipenko said on Facebook. Zerkalo is a website based outside the country that is critical of the authoritarian government of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Sasha Filipenko, who lives outside Belarus, is a popular novelist and one of the most prominent voices opposing Lukashenko, who has harshly cracked down on dissent and independent media since a wave of huge protests broke out in 2020.
Those protests started after a disputed presidential election whose results gave another term to Lukashenko, who has ruled since 1994.