Anti-Lukashenko artist Ales Pushkin dies in Belarus prison aged 57
A Belarusian artist who once dumped manure outside the office of the president, Alexander Lukashenko, has died in prison, where he was serving a five-year sentence.
Ales Pushkin died in the prison in Grodno in western Belarus of an unknown cause, even though the 57-year-old was not known to be sick, the Viasna human rights centre said on Tuesday.
His wife, Janina Demuch, told AP he had “died in the intensive care unit of the prison under unclear circumstances”.
Belarusian authorities did not comment.
Pushkin was a political performer and cartoonist whose subject was often Lukashenko, the country’s authoritarian leader. The artist painted Lukashenko in hell, surrounded by riot police, on a fresco in a church in the Belarusian city of Bobr.
In 1999, Pushkin was sentenced to two years for overturning a dung cart at the entrance to the presidential office in Minsk.
Pushkin was an active participant in political opposition protests. He was arrested again in March 2021, then sentenced to five years in prison for inciting hatred and “desecration of state symbols”. Allegedly, at one of his exhibitions, Pushkin painted a Belarusian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazis during the second world war. During the sentencing, he undressed in protest, for which he was placed in solitary confinement for 13 days.
Belarus was gripped by massive protests when Lukashenko was re-elected in August 2020 in balloting widely considered fraudulent. Authorities responded with a brutal crackdown that resulted in the arrests of more than 35,000 people, police beatings and the shutdown of many non-governmental organisations and independent media outlets.
According to Viasna, Belarus has jailed nearly 1,500 political prisoners, including the Nobel peace prize winner Ales Bialiatski.
The exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said she was “heartbroken” about Pushkin’s death, and demanded an investigation.
“It is clear that Pushkin has become another tragic victim of the Lukashenko regime,” she said. “Thousands of political prisoners are suffering in Belarusian prisons for taking part in pro-democracy protests, supporting Ukraine, or simply expressing their beliefs.”