FILE PHOTO: Viktor Babariko, attends a news conference in Minsk, Belarus June 11, 2020. Picture taken June 11, 2020. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko/File Photo
(Reuters) - Jailed Belarusian politician Viktor Babariko, who was arrested while trying to run in a 2020 election against President Alexander Lukashenko, has been allowed to send a message to his family for the first time in nearly two years.
Photographs and a short video, in which Babariko appeared to be addressing his daughter, were published online by a prominent Belarusian journalist who visited him in prison.
Until now, Babariko was one of at least nine Belarusian political prisoners being held incommunicado without letters or visits from their family members or lawyers, according to human rights group Viasna. A 10th, Maria Kalesnikava, was allowed to meet her father in November after over 600 days without contact.
Viasna says Lukashenko freed 227 political prisoners in a series of pardons in 2024, in what some members of the exiled opposition see as a first sign he is starting to respond to Western sanctions and pressure over human rights. But the rights group says 1,265 remained behind bars at the turn of the year.
Lukashenko, in power since 1994 and seeking a new term on Jan. 26 in an election that the opposition has denounced as a sham, denies there are political prisoners in the ex-Soviet state.
Babariko, 61, was arrested two months before the August 2020 election and jailed for 14 years in July 2021 on corruption charges that he denied.
Ivan Kravtsov, who helped to organise Babariko's presidential bid, told Reuters it was the first glimpse of the former banker and politician since all visits, phone calls and correspondence with him were severed in April 2022.
"I think a lot of Belarusians felt relief today because they were able to see him alive," said Kravtsov, a leading member of the exiled opposition who was last year sentenced to 11 years in absentia on extremism charges, which he denies.
He said that despite ongoing repression and arrests, the recent prisoner releases and the granting of some access to Babariko and Kalesnikava were signs of "substantial change".
Lukashenko won the 2020 election with the help of massive vote-rigging, according to the opposition and Western governments. He used his security apparatus to crush mass protests against the result, detaining thousands of people, and all leading opposition figures were jailed or fled the country.
The photos and video of Babariko were posted online by Roman Protasevich, a journalist who also broke the news of the November meeting between Kalesnikava and her father.
Protasevich, the former editor of an independent news outlet that reported on the protests against Lukashenko, was arrested with his then-girlfriend in May 2021 when Belarusian authorities forced their Ryanair flight to land in the capital Minsk.
He was jailed for eight years in 2023 on charges of extremism, but received a pardon soon afterwards and expressed gratitude to Lukashenko. Some opposition figures have accused him of selling out to the authorities and becoming a collaborator, while also speculating he may have been tortured while in prison.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Ros Russell)
