{"id":528432,"date":"2026-03-25T20:10:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T17:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=528432"},"modified":"2026-03-26T08:54:50","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:54:50","slug":"women-convicted-in-courtyard-chats-case-recognized-as-political-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/women-convicted-in-courtyard-chats-case-recognized-as-political-prisoners","title":{"rendered":"Women Convicted in \u201cCourtyard Chats\u201d Case Recognized as Political Prisoners"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Another nine people have been recognized as political prisoners in Belarus, the Viasna human rights center reported.<\/p>\n<p>Among them are <b>Vitaliy Kaleda<\/b>, convicted under several articles of the Criminal Code, including \u201cinsulting a government official\u201d and \u201cinciting social hatred\u201d; <b>Barys Kritski<\/b>, sentenced to seven years in prison for facilitating an extremist formation; and defendants in the \u201ccourtyard chats\u201d case \u2014 <b>Anzhela Aharok<\/b>, <b>Iryna Yakavleva<\/b>, <b>Viktoryia Hrynko<\/b>, and <b>Volha Varabyeva<\/b>, who received prison terms ranging from eight to nine years under an article on conspiracy \u201cto seize state power.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Uladzimir Zakharau<\/b> was convicted, among other charges, of \u201cdiscrediting Belarus,\u201d while <b>Volha Kharlamava<\/b> is in custody on charges of \u201ctreason.\u201d <b>Uladzislau Vakulchyk<\/b> remains in detention after the expiration of his sentence.<\/p>\n<p>According to Viasna, a total of 898 people currently hold political prisoner status in Belarus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another nine people have been recognized as political prisoners in Belarus, the Viasna human rights center reported. Among them are Vitaliy Kaleda, convicted under several articles of the Criminal Code, including \u201cinsulting a government official\u201d and \u201cinciting social hatred\u201d; Barys Kritski, sentenced to seven years in prison for facilitating an extremist formation; and defendants in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":523857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/69c4ca2e454ac.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Women Convicted in \u201cCourtyard Chats\u201d Case Recognized as Political Prisoners"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143090],"tags":[143178],"class_list":["post-528432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-politics","tag-politzakljuchennye"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}