Andrej Kim was born on 26 February 1986 in Minsk. He graduated from the banned Byelorussian Jakub Kolasa High-School, then studied history at the Belarusian State University. An activist of the oppositional youth movement.
Chronicle of repression
Thousands of people, including civil society activists and businessmen, took to the streets in Minsk on 10 January 2008 to participate in a demonstration against the introduction of a presidential decree concerning restrictive tax and employment regulations for small businesses. The demonstration was organized by entrepreneurs who had applied to the authorities for permission to hold the demonstration. They did not receive a reply to their request and decided to go ahead with the protest. Fourteen individuals were subsequently convicted for organization and active participation in group actions, seriously violating public order, among them Andrej Kim who was detained during the demonstration.
By that time, Andrej Kim had already been few times tried on the basis of the Administrative Code. Each time he was accused of petty hooliganism. For the first time – during participation in the election campaign of Aliaksandr Kazulin in 2006, Kim received 12 days in jail. The second time – in 2007, after the celebration of Halloween he spent seven days in jail.
On 22 January 2008 judge Tatiana Pavluchak found Kim guilty of the alleged crimes, and sentenced him to 10 days in jail and a fine of one million and fifty thousand BYR. On 31 January, when his sentence finished, he was taken straight from the arrest to questioning to the prosecutor’s office. He was detained in the Volodarka prison.
On 22 April 2008 Judge Jekaterina Ilina found Andrej Kim guilty of committing a crime under the art. 342, part 1 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus (organization and active participation in group actions, seriously violating public order) and the art. 364 (violent actions against a militia officer) and sentenced Andrej to one and a half years of imprisonment in a penal colony.
On 21 May 2008 Andrej Kim was transferred to the colony in Bobruisk. On 20 August 2008 he was released on amnesty.
In December 2010, he took part in the events on the Independence Square in Minsk. He secretly fled Belarus after 19 December, when his home and office were searched.
