Marija Kolesnikova and Maxim Snak are imprisoned for deeds that would make them respected public figures in any free country: They campaigned for a candidate with a moderate reform program, worked on a peaceful change of power through democratic means and adherence to Laws required.
In the eyes of the violent arbitrary ruler Lukashenko and his henchmen, these are crimes that are all the more serious since the two of them, although they knew what was threatening them, stayed in Belarus.
Staying was an act of resistance;
that Kolesnikova was able to resist deportation from her home country was a defeat for the regime.
Iconography of the democracy movement
How insecure Lukashenko feels even after the violent termination of the mass protests and how much he fears Kolesnikova's symbolism can be seen in the fact that he did not dare to have the trial of her and Snak conducted in public.
The smile with which the two defied their persecutors from the cage in the courtroom on the day the verdict was pronounced will go down in the iconography of the Belarusian democracy movement.
It is to be feared that Lukashenko is now trying to break Kolesnikowa and Snak as his henchmen did with thousands of lesser-known victims who were physically and mentally tortured and ill-treated last year. As a democratic neighbor of Belarus, the EU must therefore not go back to business after the dutiful outrage over this injustice judgment. It has no lever to force the release of political prisoners in Belarus. But she has to put the dictator under pressure by all means at her disposal. Because his contempt for humanity crosses borders, as is also manifested in the fact that he tries to turn migrants into weapons against the EU.