Tiktoker jailed for anti-war poem that 'insulted Lukashenka'

Aliaksey Viacherni, a 62-year-old resident of the village of Vymna, Vitsebsk district, was sentenced to 1 year and nine months in prison. According to "Narodnyia Naviny Vitsebsk," the reason for the conviction was a video with a poem on TikTok, which was viewed 244 times.

The video with the poem was published on March 20. The investigation found "public insult of Aliaksandr Lukashenka, expressed in an indecent, derogatory and insulting form, which negatively assesses the latter and contains profanity" in the video.

The man said that he wrote the poem after the Ukrainian cities were shelled from the territory of Belarus. Then he recorded a video and published it on the social network.

Law enforcers searched the house of Aliaksey Viacherni and found a notebook with the manuscript of the poem, as well as a smartphone with a TikTok account.

The man was found guilty of publicly insulting the leader of Belarus. 

Aliaksey Viacherni is an ethnic Ukrainian. He was born in the Cherkasy district. He created an agro-eco estate in Vymna, where he grows more than 100 plums and about 90 cherries. He actively participated in amateur performances and the festival of national cultures. The district newspaper "Zhizn Pridvinya" repeatedly wrote about him.