Human rights defender Barys Zvozskau would have been 65 today

Barys Zvozskau was born on February 26, 1949 in the town of Belogorsk (Russia). He graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute with a degree in engineering. Later, Barys Zvozskau graduated from the Higher International Human Rights Course.

Since the 1990s, Zvozskau began to be engaged in human rights activities, legal protection in politically motivated trials, participated in the examination of a number of bills. Since 1998, he was engaged in preventive human rights protection.

The human rights activist worked very hard with journalists and civil society activists in administrative and criminal proceedings. He made a great contribution to human rights education for young people, lawyers, journalists and human rights defenders. In 2008, was awarded the "Human Rights Defender of the Year” prize.

From the outset, Barys Zvozskau was among the initiators and active participants in the process of creating and later development of the Belarusian Human Rights House, from 2007 to 2010 he was its president. On July 31, 2013, the Belarusian Human Rights House was officially named after Barys Zvozskau.

The prominent Belarusian human rights activist died in June 2012.