Leonid Sudalenko is a well-known human rights activist both in Belarus and abroad, who has been defending human rights for 20 years and has provided free legal assistance, including preparing individual appeals to the Human Rights Committee on violations of human rights by the Belarusian authorities. In 2018 he was awarded the French Republic’s prestigious Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood Prize for his work, and in 2019 he was awarded the National Human Rights Prize in the category ‘Human Rights Defender of the Year’.
Belarusian authorities regularly persecuted Sudalenko for his human rights activism, staging provocations to persecute him, putting him on the control list for crossing the state border, and trying to discredit him through pro-state mass media publications and the secret services.