{"id":552775,"date":"2026-06-20T10:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T07:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=552775"},"modified":"2026-06-20T14:46:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:46:44","slug":"defendants-in-the-honest-people-case-added-to-extremist-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/defendants-in-the-honest-people-case-added-to-extremist-list","title":{"rendered":"Defendants in the Honest People Case Added to \u2018Extremist\u2019 List"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The Interior Ministry has added another 25 individuals to the \u201cList of Citizens of the Republic of Belarus, Foreign Citizens and Stateless Persons Involved in Extremist Activity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Among them are Honest People activists \u2014 <b>Alena Zhylachkin\u0430<\/b>\u00a0(Zhivoglod),\u00a0<b>Zaryna Sarokina<\/b>,\u00a0<b>Aleh Davydchyk<\/b><strong> and <b>Tsimafey Malakhouski<\/b><\/strong>. A verdict in the case was handed down in absentia by the <a href=\"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/up-to-10-years-in-prison-and-heavy-fines-in-absentia-verdict-delivered-in-the-honest-people-case\">Vitsyebsk Regional Court<\/a> on Jan. 22. The defendants were charged under several articles of the Criminal Code, including \u201cdiscrediting Belarus,\u201d \u201cinciting hatred,\u201d \u201cinsulting and slandering Lukashenka,\u201d and \u201ccalling for sanctions against the Republic of Belarus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Alena Zhylachkin\u0430 was sentenced to 10 years in a medium-security penal colony and fined 67,500 Belarusian rubles. Zaryna Sarokina, Tsimafey Malakhouski and Aleh Davydchyk were each sentenced to eight years in a penal colony and fined 40,500 Belarusian rubles.<\/p>\n<p>The Honest People initiative was established in 2020 to counter alleged fraud in the presidential election. Its volunteers sought to join precinct election commissions and served as election observers. Together with the Golos and ZUBR.in organizations, Honest People organized online platforms for monitoring polling stations and the Golos platform for an independent vote count.<\/p>\n<p>Political analyst <strong><b>Dzmitry Balkunets<\/b><\/strong> was also added to the list. He had previously been convicted in absentia under eight articles of the Criminal Code.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cextremist list\u201d now contains 6,728 names.<\/p>\n<p>Belarusian authorities regularly use extremism-related charges to target political opponents and dissent more broadly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Interior Ministry has added another 25 individuals to the \u201cList of Citizens of the Republic of Belarus, Foreign Citizens and Stateless Persons Involved in Extremist Activity.\u201d Among them are Honest People activists \u2014 Alena Zhylachkin\u0430\u00a0(Zhivoglod),\u00a0Zaryna Sarokina,\u00a0Aleh Davydchyk and Tsimafey Malakhouski. A verdict in the case was handed down in absentia by the Vitsyebsk Regional [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":511662,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/6a367da8c372c.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Defendants in the Honest People Case Added to \u2018Extremist\u2019 List"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143090],"tags":[143213],"class_list":["post-552775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-politics","tag-chestnye-ljudi"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552775","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\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=552775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/552775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=552775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=552775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=552775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}