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Rastsislau Stefanovich is a 33-year-old designer and architect. He is married to Christina, with whom he has two children Nicole, who is eight, and Mark, who is six. As well as being an artist (see his drawings below), he is also a defender with the Minsk Zubrs American football team. In August 2020, he became a member of the expanded Coordination Council for the Transfer of Power, which was set up on the initiative of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to facilitate the democratic transfer of power in Belarus. There are about 5500 members of the expanded Coordination Council.

Maria Kalenik is a 23-year-old student of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts. She was detained on 12 November 2020, accused of organising and participating in group actions that gravely violate public order. Her apartment was searched, and she was held in the KGB pre-trial prison. On 16 July 2021, she was sentenced to two years and six months in prison in a case known as “the student case”, which involved 12 defendants. Ksenia Syramalot, whose letter was previously published, was one of her co-defendants in the case.

Pavel Seviarynets is a writer, an opposition politician, co-founder of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party. He was detained on 7 June 2020 and held in pre-trial detention for several months before being charged with organising mass riots. In May 2021, he was sentenced to seven years in a penal colony. He is serving his sentence in Shklov in eastern Belarus.

Pavel Mazko is a 19-year-old from Brest in south-western Belarus. He has been in pre-trial detention since 23 March 2021, charged in connection to his participation in the post-election protests in August 2020.

Andrei Aliaksandrau is a journalist and human rights defender. He had been a media manager and deputy director of the Belarusian Private News Agency (BelaPAN) prior to his detention. In the 2010s, he lived and worked in the UK where he studied media management at the University of Westminster, before taking on roles at Index on Censorship and Article 19. Andrei was detained on 12 January 2021 alongside his partner, Irina Zlobina. He is being accused of financing the protests in Minsk by paying fines and reimbursing the costs for detention in temporary detention facilities for those detained during protests in Minsk. He has since been charged with high treason and, if convicted, could face up to 15 years in prison. He remains in pre-trial detention.

Hanna Vishniak is a volunteer with Telegram channel “Drivers-97”. The channel, which has 5,000 subscribers, was initially set up to facilitate communication that would help bring people and resources where they were needed. Hanna was detained on 28 October 2020 and held in pre-trial detention in Minsk. On 4 June 2021, she was convicted of “organising and preparing activities that grossly violate public order” and sentenced to 2.5 years in prison. She was then taken to a “correctional colony” in Gomel in south-eastern Belarus.

Ihnat Sidorchyk is a film director, actor and poet. He was detained on 10 August 2020 and initially charged with “organisation of mass riots” for having called on friends to meet in central Minsk on 9 August (the day of the presidential election) via a Telegram chat. In February 2021, Ihnat was sentenced to three years of restricted freedom in an open penitentiary (so-called “khimiya”), finding him guilty of “group actions that grossly violate public order”. Ihnat was released to await an appeal hearing, but he was re-arrested in June 2021 to begin serving his sentence.

Katsyaryna Andreeva is a journalist for the independent media outlet Belsat, who has been detained since November 2020. In the months before her arrest, she had been covering the nationwide protests that surrounded the August presidential election.

Danila Hancharou is a lighting designer who had previously been employed at the New Drama Theater in Minsk. On 15 March, his apartment was searched, and he was detained for having held a one-person picket. Having been sentenced to 15 days in prison, he was due to be released on 30 March. But on 26 March, he was taken for interrogation and charged with the “organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order.” He was subsequently transferred to a pre-trial detention centre. On 9 July 2021, he was put on trial and sentenced to two years in prison. He remains imprisoned in “correctional facility” #17 (IK-17) in Shklow in the Mogliev region of Belarus.