Yaroslav Belousov

Yaroslav Gennadievich Belousov (born July 30, 1991) is a Russian political-science student who was a participant in the May 6, 2012, Bolotnaya Square protest against President Vladimir Putin and who has been imprisoned since June 9, 2012, as a result of his participation in the protest.

Russia's Memorial Human Rights Center considers Belousov a political prisoner; Amnesty International has declared him a prisoner of conscience and has described his trial in 2013-14 as a farce. Human Rights Watch calls his conviction a “miscarriage of justice.” His continued imprisonment has been condemned by both the U.S. State Department and by the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Early life and education Belousov was born on July 30, 1991.

Bolotnaya Square protest

A mass protest against Vladimir Putin took place on May 6, 2012, in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. The participants in the demonstration were described in the New York Times as a representation of middle-class Russians opposed to Putin's presidency. According to his wife, Belousov had gradually become more active in promoting civic discussion. Belousov was among those arrested during the protests, and released the same day. Gazeta reported on July 4, 2012, that the Basmanny court had extended the incarceration of Belousov and three other protesters, Maxim Lusyanin, Andrei Barabanov, and Fedor Backhov.

Support for Belousov In June 2012, Russia's human-rights ombudsman stated the mass-rioting charges brought against Belousov and others were disproportionate. In December 2013, “an international panel of experts on freedom of assembly published a report that found that although there were individual violent episodes” that had taken place in Bolotnaya Square, they did not constitute a 'mass riot'. This panel, too, described the criminal charges brought against Belousov and others as unwarranted and concluded that the May 6 violence was a result of the government's response. While the defense said that the item in question was a lemon, and that the policeman who claimed to have been harmed by the projectile had departed from the scene before it was thrown, prosecutors argued that the object in question had been a billiard ball. Human Rights Watch described the guilty verdicts against Belousov and the other seven defendants as “a miscarriage of justice.”

Outside the court, protesters held a banner reading: “You Can’t Jail Everybody.”

In a February 25, 2014, statement, the U.S. Department of State condemned the sentencing of Belousov and the other protestors. The State Department claimed that they had been unlawfully detained for over a year on politically-motivated charges, calling it "another example of punishment of Russians for exercising their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and assembly."

On February 27, 2014, the co-chairman of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the House of Representatives of the United States, Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Frank Wolf (R-VA), expressed “grave concern over the mass detentions of peaceful protesters” who had taken to the streets “to protest the sentences handed down in the cases of eight participants of the Bolotnaya Square demonstrations,” including Belousov. The Lantos Commission described the trials as having been “marked by a lack of due process” and as “widely recognized as politically-motivated,” and urged the Russian government “to address these recent instances of blatant injustice.”

Personal life Belousov and his wife, Tamara Belousova, were married in 2010. She was 21 years old in June 2013, and at that time was also a political science student. She and her husband are the parents of a son, Andrei, who was 4 years old as of June 2015. According to his wife, Belousov is “a scholarly man interested in political science” Describing him as “a man of books,” she told the New York Times in June 2013 that “this saves him now that he is in jail….I asked him how he celebrated the New Year; he answered that he finished reading five volumes of the history of the Middle Ages.”