A monthly chronology of repression and resistance in Belarus, based on the work of IFEX members and other international and domestic actors.
The rigged presidential election of August 2020 sparked a huge wave of popular protest that swept across Belarus, bringing together people from all sections of society in a call for President Lukashenka’s ouster and new elections. The authorities’ response was a crackdown of such magnitude and brutality that it grabbed headlines around the world. Tens of thousands of peaceful protesters were detained, as well as hundreds of journalists and members of civil society organisations. There were credible reports of torture in police custody. As we launch this dedicated page, that crackdown is ongoing: recent months have seen multiple arrests of journalists, with several dubious convictions, as well as a campaign of harassment targeting civil society organisations, including IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists.
The response from the international community has been one of condemnations, calls for independent investigations into human rights abuses and multiple rounds of sanctions. IFEX members have been campaigning on behalf of persecuted activists and journalists, and have also launched numerous advocacy initiatives aimed at keeping the international focus on events in Belarus.
IFEX’s Europe and Central Asia Regional Editor, Cathal Sheerin, has been providing updates on all this work and on the situation in Belarus more generally in his monthly Regional Briefs. On this page, you’ll find his updates collected together, always with the most recent at the top, to present a regularly updated monthly chronology of IFEX members’ activities and other key developments in Belarus.
June 2024
June in Belarus saw some high profile journalists and opposition voices sentenced to long prison terms.
On 20 June, Franak Viacorka, exiled political adviser to the exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was handed a 20-year prison sentence in absentia. He was convicted on various charges, including treason, “creating an extremist organisation” and defaming the president.
In early June, freelancer Alena Tsimashchuk was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of “discrediting the Republic of Belarus”, “inciting hostility or discord”, and “participating in an extremist organisation”.
But, just as the repression continued, so did efforts to hold the Belarusian government to account.
June saw Freedom House testify at the US Helsinki Commission alongside Tsikhanouskaya on the plight of political prisoners in Belarus. The hearing can be viewed here.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) continues to be a source of invaluable information on the situation for independent press in journalism in Belarus. This month, it published a report on media repression during the first four months of 2024, which saw: four journalists sentenced to between 2.5 and four years in prison (mostly on “extremism” charges); criminal cases filed against another seven journalists, five of whom are in exile; five cases of arbitrary detention; and at least seven online media projects or websites classed as “extremist organisations” and blocked.
On 31 May, the Supreme Court in Serbia ruled that exiled Belarusian journalist Andrei Hniot could be extradited to Belarus, where he faces trial on politically-motivated charges of tax evasion.
May 2024
On 21 May, rights groups marked the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. The theme of this year was the right to health and medical care in detention. According to Viasna, six political prisoners have died behind bars in the last three years due to untreated medical conditions or substandard medical care. The organisation has identified another 254 prisoners who are at risk due to health-related issues.
On 17 May, police raided the Minsk apartment of Barys Haretski, deputy chairman of IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). Haretski and other BAJ leaders have been living in exile since 2021. BAJ reports that a case has been opened against Haretski, but the details are as yet unknown. The day before Haretski’s property was raided, authorities seized the apartment of exiled journalist Dzmitry Kazakevich.
Earlier in May, BAJ and the Union of Lithuanian Journalists marked World Press Freedom Day by organising a solidarity event in Lukiškės Prison, Vilnius. The event highlighted the plight of over 30 journalists who are currently behind bars in Belarus.
https://twitter.com/baj_by/status/1788164880350024163
Media Freedom Rapid Response partners called on the Serbian authorities to release Belarusian journalist and activist Andrey Gniot, who has been behind bars in Serbia since his arrest in October 2023. He was detained on politically-motivated charges of tax evasion, formulated by the authorities in Minsk. The Serbian courts are considering a request to deport Gniot to Belarus.
April 2024
In Belarus, at least 20 news websites labelled “extremist” by the authorities have had their domain names cancelled, making many of them inaccessible. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), which changed its own domain name in 2023 in anticipation of losing its old address, has published a list of affected websites. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) described “robbing independent media outlets of their domain names” as “a ruthless form of censorship”.
The persecution of independent journalists and those allegedly connected to so-called “extremist organisations” continued: On 5 April, the Stolin District Court handed Aliaksandr Ihnatsiuk, a blogger and former editor of the newspaper Vecherniy Stolin, six years in prison after he was dubiously convicted of organising protests, defaming President Lukashenka and blackmail; on 19 April, the Minsk City Court sentenced Anastasia Matsiash, a language consultant who had worked with the exiled media outlet Belsat TV, to two years in prison for participating in an “extremist organisation”.
Imprisoned opposition leader Maria Kalesnikava saw another birthday behind bars this month. Arrested in September 2020 while anti-Lukashenka protests were sweeping Belarus, Kalesnikava was detained for a year before facing trial. In September 2021, she was convicted of “conspiracy to seize power”, calling for “actions aimed at causing harm to the national security” and creating an “extremist organisation”; she was sentenced to eleven years in prison. Kalesnikava has suffered harsh treatment and ill health in prison. Her family last heard from her in February 2023.
March 2024
In March, The Economic Court of Minsk ordered the liquidation of the news agency BelaPAN, which was declared “extremist” in 2021. Four BelaPAN journalists – Iryna Leushyna, Dzmitry Navazhylau, Andrei Aliaksandrau and Iryna Zlobina – are already behind bars, having been handed long prison sentences in 2022 on spurious charges ranging from high treason to tax evasion.
The liquidation of civil society organisations (CSOs) in Belarus has been relentless since President Lukashenka launched his “purge” of civil society in 2021. According to the Belarusian human rights group Lawtrend, by February 2024 “at least 1,563 institutionalized forms of CSOs, including civic associations, professional unions, political parties, foundations, non-governmental institutions, associations, and religious organizations.had been dissolved by a court, otherwise de-registered, or opted for voluntary liquidation” since the 2020 elections.
The prosecution and sentencing of independent journalists also continued this month: on 21 March, videographer Andrei Tolchyn was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for “facilitating extremist activities” and defaming Lukashenka; on 22 March, freelancer Ihar Karnei was handed a three-year prison sentence for “participating in an extremist group”.
Early March saw the one-year anniversary of the sentencing of Viasna members Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovic and Uladzimir Labkovich to ten, nine and seven years of imprisonment respectively. Several international human rights groups, including ARTICLE 19, marked the anniversary by calling for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Belarus.
In mid-March, Human Rights Watch, the Belarusian Association of Journalists and several other rights organisations published an open letter to the ambassadors of member states of the UN Human Rights Council (UN HRC): the groups urged the UN HRC to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Belarus and establish “a fully independent investigative mechanism to collect and preserve evidence of potential international crimes beyond the 2020 elections period, with a view to advancing accountability”.
January 2024: Looking ahead
Parliamentary elections in Belarus are scheduled for 25 February 2024. They will be the first elections to be held in the country since the August 2020 presidential election that kept Lukashenka in power, triggered a massive wave of popular protest, and launched the ongoing crackdown on the independent press and civil society.The exiled opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, has called on the international community to “reject” the upcoming elections: “With political parties dismantled, leaders jailed or exiled, this is nothing more than a charade,” she tweeted in November.
And it’s not just political parties that have been dismantled. Lukashenka’s “purge” of civil society organisations (CSOs), launched in 2021, has had a devastating effect on civil society. According to the Belarusian human rights group Lawtrend, by September 2023 a jaw-dropping 1,441 CSOs had been dissolved by a court, otherwise de-registered, or opted for voluntary liquidation. Several CSOs have been forced to work in exile.
One of those CSOs ordered to dissolve is the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). As BAJ reminded us in its recent overview of 2023, Belarus is one of the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with 32 media workers detained behind bars at the turn of the year. Other statistics for 2023 provided by BAJ are equally disturbing: 46 journalists arrested, 33 media outlets (including BAJ) declared “extremist” and 12 media outlets declared “terrorist”.
With so many groups put out of action, with so many journalists, civic activists and others in prison for challenging Lukashenka during the 2020 election or in its aftermath (currently, Belarus has over 1,400 political prisoners), it would be very surprising if February 2024 saw the massive, organised expression of dissent that we saw in 2020.
But that doesn’t mean that the authorities are taking any chances.
In a recent article for openDemocracy, the journalist Igor Ilyash (husband of imprisoned journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva) describes the upcoming February elections as “a serious stress test” for Lukashenka’s government ahead of the 2025 presidential election. As Ilyash explains, preparations for smothering dissent and ensuring an unfair electoral process are already well underway:
“Belarusian security forces are currently training in how to disperse mass protests and conducting mass searches of members of the opposition Coordination Council. They plan to make the personal data of members of election commissions secret, so that they do not fear being publicly ostracised for participating in election fraud. A ban has been introduced on photographing or filming a completed ballot, after protesters in 2020 used ballot images to try and organise a new vote count. The authorities have refused to set up polling stations abroad, meaning several hundred thousand political emigres will be excluded from the election process. And specifically, as an antidote to the boycott strategy, the election turnout threshold has been eliminated.”
The shock to the Lukashenka regime of the 2020 protests is still reverberating, as is evidenced by the authorities’ continued harassment and persecution of those groups and individuals who did not toe the line. December 2023 saw rights activist Alyaksandra Kasko sentenced to ten years in prison for her involvement in the 2020 demonstrations. It also saw former observers of the 2020 elections subjected to searches and harassment by state agents.
In early January 2024, Lukashenka signed a law giving him immunity from prosecution for life and banning exiled opposition leaders from standing in presidential elections.
November 2023
November saw civil society groups, activists and politicians mark the International Day of Solidarity with Belarus, with the EU once again calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Belarus’s almost 1,500 political prisoners.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists’s (BAJ) global Solidarity Marathon for Imprisoned Journalists continued, and saw the welcome involvement of exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, high-ranking politicians from Lithuania and Ireland, and IFEX members. There were also solidarity events in the Czech Republic, Canada, Poland, Ukraine and the UK.
Reporters Without Borders’s (RSF) solidarity action for jailed Belarusian editor Maryna Zolatava saw the organisation deliver hundreds of messages of support for the journalist – on her birthday – to Belarusian embassies in Paris, London, Berlin, Bern, Stockholm, Vienna, and Washington DC.
The invaluable work of BAJ, which released a report in November on the situation for independent media and civil society over the last year, was recognised once again when the organisation received the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum’s 2023 Civil Society Prize.
November saw Alexander Mantsevich, director of the newspaper Regionalnaya Gazeta, sentenced to four years in prison for “discrediting Belarus”.
The month also saw the Supreme Court reduce freelancer Viachaslau Lazarau’s prison sentence by 6 months to five years; his wife, Tatsiana Pytsko, who was previously sentenced to three years in prison, had her punishment reduced to a three-year suspended sentence. In September, the couple were found guilty of working with the Belsat TV channel, which has been labelled “extremist” by the authorities.
October 2023
In October, Index on Censorship launched a solidarity campaign for their former colleague, imprisoned journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau, marking 1,000 days that he had been behind bars in Belarus on trumped-up charges. Working with the Belarusian poet Hanna Komar, Index translated a poem that Aliaksandrau wrote while in pre-trial detention and produced a short video of some of his friends and former colleagues reading the poem aloud:
Mid-month, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Belarus violated international human rights law by imprisoning RFE/RL journalist Ihar Losik in 2020. Losik is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence on spurious charges of “organising mass protests” and “inciting hatred”.
According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, by late October there were 34 journalists behind bars in Belarus. Human rights group Viasna lists 1,470 political prisoners in the country’s prison system.
August 2023
On 9 August, IFEX members and other rights groups marked the third anniversary of the unfair presidential election in Belarus that kept President Lukashenka in power, triggered a wave of popular protest against the result, and launched a harsh crackdown on freedom of expression and civil society.
IFEX published a Q&A with the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), focusing on the situation on the ground for Belarusian journalists and civil society, and highlighting BAJ’s ongoing Solidarity Marathon.
Launched by BAJ and the Lithuanian Union of Journalists on World Press Freedom Day 2023, the Solidarity Marathon aims to keep the challenges faced by independent Belarusian media in the public eye. It asks citizens around the world to download portraits of imprisoned Belarusian journalists, take photos with them near landmarks and other recognisable places, and then upload them on social media.
The 9 of August also saw:
- The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) publish a declaration of solidarity with Belarus’s imprisoned journalists, calling for their immediate release, and urging members of the public to take part in BAJ’s Solidarity Marathon.
- Freedom House call for the release of all political prisoners and on the international community to “stand with democratic actors in Belarus and demand justice for the victims of the Lukashenka regime”.
- The International Press Institute (IPI) call for the release of all jailed journalists, for restrictions on the media to be lifted, and on the international community to support independent Belarusian media, including those in exile.
- PEN America release a statement focusing on the repression of writers and intellectuals, and urging the Council of Europe, the EU and the OSCE to do more to protect these independent voices, including by putting in place “special funding to protect Belarusian culture” and “more simplified visa procedures for writers fleeing Belarus”.
- PEN International and PEN Belarus call on Lukashenka’s government to end the crackdown on dissent, highlighting the case of the imprisoned artist Aleś Puškin who died in prison in July 2023 after being denied access to urgent medical care.
- Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemn a “new wave” of repression in Belarus which, unusually, is targeting employees of state media and outlets that “usually toe the government line”.
- The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) publish a new report – Suppression of the Right to Defend Human Rights in Belarus – which focuses on the restrictive legislation and tools deployed by the state to repress civil society.
Lukashenka’s “purge” of civil society continues. On 23 August, it was reported on Belarusian state news that the renowned civil society organisation, Viasna Human Rights Center, had been declared “extremist” by the authorities. Five members of Viasna – including its Nobel Prize-winning chairperson Ales Bialiatski – are currently serving long prison sentences on trumped-up charges.
July 2023
On 1 July, President Lukashenka signed into law a bill that extends the authorities’ control over the media. According to the state-owned news agency BelTA, the bill – which amends the Law on Mass Media – is “aimed at improving the mechanisms for protecting national interests in the media sphere, as well as expanding the tools for responding to unfriendly actions against Belarus”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which called for the law to be reversed, described it as translating already widely-used repressive practices into the legal sphere. The new legislation empowers the Ministry of Information to ban the activities of foreign media in Belarus in retaliation for “unfriendly actions” by a foreign state; it expands the basis for blocking foreign and local news sites; and it enables the state to withdraw a media outlet’s registration if its founder or owner is involved in “extremist” or “terrorist” activity. In recent years, several independent media outlets and civil society actors – such as IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) – have been designated as “extremist” or “terrorist”.
Among those targeted with “extremism” charges in July were journalist Pavel Mazheika and lawyer Yulia Yurhilevich. They were each sentenced to six years in prison on charges of “promoting extremist activities”, based on their alleged sharing of information with the Poland-based Belsat TV channel. Belsat was designated “extremist” in 2021. As Human Rights Watch (HRW) points out, the information allegedly shared with Belsat was already available on Belarusian government websites and concerned Yurhilevich’s work defending political detainees and her disbarment by the authorities in 2022.
Towards the end of the month, former journalist Larysa Shchyrakova went on trial behind closed doors on charges of “facilitating extremist activities” and “discrediting Belarus”. She faces up to seven years in prison if convicted.
ARTICLE 19 highlighted the Belarusian authorities’ use of “anti-extremism” legislation to suppress civil society in a joint submission to the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Belarus in June.
Next month (9 August) will see the third anniversary of the disputed presidential election that kept Lukashenka in power, triggered a wave of popular protest against the result, and launched a harsh crackdown on freedom of expression and civil society. IFEX members and others will be marking the anniversary in various ways. For a month-by-month overview of the key developments in Belarus since the 2020 election, check out IFEX’s Belarusian chronology.
June 2023
Belarus’s crackdown on civil society continues.
In June, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) reported that its logo had been listed as “extremist” content, putting those who use it – or have items bearing it – at risk of prosecution. BAJ, which was labelled “extremist” by the authorities earlier this year, and which was liquidated by the politicised Supreme Court in 2021, has warned all journalists in Belarus to remove any items bearing the logo from their homes and offices.
June also saw access to BAJ’s website blocked in Russia.
The number of political prisoners in Belarus continues to rise; by the end of June, there were 1,496 individuals languishing behind bars on politically-motivated charges. Among these prisoners is Tatsiana Pytsko, who was detained early in the month and charged with “creating or participating in an extremist organisation”. The charges against her are based on alleged assistance she gave to her cameraman husband (jailed in February) in the course of his work; her detention brings the number of media workers detained in Belarus to 34.
Several IFEX members and other rights groups highlighted the cases of two high-profile political prisoners in June – prominent opposition figure Maria Kalesnikava and human rights defender Nasta Loika – and called for their immediate release.
Kalesnikava, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2021, is currently in solitary confinement and has been denied adequate access to medical treatment and legal representation. Loika, who has been tortured in detention, was handed a seven-year prison sentence during a closed trial this month; her prosecution was based on her work investigating human rights violations carried out by law enforcement officials.
A useful overview of the situation for independent journalists in Belarus was published this month by BAJ and Justice for Journalists. Their report, which mainly focuses on the period 2021-2022, examines several tools of persecution employed by the authorities against critical media. These include judicial harassment, violence, ill treatment in detention and cyber attacks (instances of the latter rose sharply during 2020-2021). Overall, the number of reported cases of persecution has decreased since 2020, but not for any positive reason: due to imprisonments, forced exile and decisions to abandon such a risky profession, there are now simply fewer journalists to persecute.
May 2023
In Belarus, late May brought surprising news with the presidential pardon of NEXTA editor Raman Pratasevich. This came less than three weeks after Pratasevich was sentenced to eight years in prison on several spurious charges.
While IFEX members welcomed Pratasevich’s pardon, they also called for the release of all of Belarus’s more than 30 imprisoned journalists. Speaking to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) also raised concerns that Pratasevich could now be used as a propaganda tool by President Lukashenka’s regime.
The announcement of Pratasevich’s pardon came one day after the Day of Solidarity with Belarus’s Political Prisoners (21 May).
Marking two years since the death in prison of activist Vitold Ashurak, the Day of Solidarity was declared by the Viasna Human Rights Centre, whose chair – Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski – is currently serving a ten-year prison sentence on trumped-up charges.
Several solidarity events were organised in Europe and the US.
Over 100 Nobel Prize laureates signed PEN International’s public letter calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Ales Bialiatski, and for an end to the crackdown on independent voices in Belarus.
IFEX also joined rights organisations in a public statement declaring solidarity with the political prisoners and condemning the harsh and degrading conditions in which many are held.
At the end of the month, following a closed trial, journalist Yauhen Merkis was sentenced to four years in prison on dubious “extremism” charges. On the same day, UN experts called on Belarus to release all political detainees.
According to Viasna, there are currently over 1,490 political prisoners in Belarus.
April 2023
On 3 May – World Press Freedom Day – a court in Belarus sentenced editor Raman Pratasevich to eight years in prison in connection to his work for the Telegram channel NEXTA. His NEXTA colleagues, Yan Rudzik and Stsypan Putsila, were sentenced in absentia to 19 years and 20 years in prison respectively. They were convicted on a range of charges, including “organising mass protests” and publicly calling for “the seizure of state power and acts of terrorism”. The authorities labelled NEXTA a “terrorist organisation” in April 2022.
The persecution of Belarusian journalists continued unabated throughout April: Kanstantsin Zalatykh, director of newspaper Belorusy i Rynok, was sentenced to four years in prison on various defamation-related charges; Aliaksandr Mantsevich, editor-in-chief of Rehijanalnaja Hazeta, was charged with “spreading false information” and faces four years in prison if found guilty; and newspaper Infa-Kurier ceased publication after the authorities labelled it “extremist”.
However, April also saw a win for Belarusian journalism when the UN Human Rights Committee decided that the Lukashenka regime violated the right to freedom of expression of four journalists, each of whom had been given administrative fines for “distributing media products without accreditation”.
The journalists – Tatsiana Smotkina, Dzmitry Lupach, Tamara Schapetkina and Larysa Schyrakova – had been charged and fined under Belarus’s draconian Law on Mass Media, which bans journalists from working with foreign media on Belarusian territory if they don’t have press credentials identifying them as foreign media representatives.
Belarus is now obliged to compensate the journalists for their fines and pay their court expenses; it will also have to revise the Law on Mass Media.
PEN America published its 2022 Freedom to Write Index in April. It reports that 16 writers and public intellectuals were held in custody in Belarus in 2022, many for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
March 2023
March was another month of draconian prison sentences and persistent pressure on civil society in Belarus. Regional IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) was designated as an “extremist organisation” by the authorities, a decision that was condemned by IFEX members and the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro. BAJ joins more than 100 CSOs and media outlets on Belarus’s list of “extremist” groups.
Following on from February’s harsh sentencing of independent voices, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was convicted in absentia of treason and “conspiracy to seize power”; she was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Later in the month, TUT.BY editor-in-chief, Maryna Zolatava, and the media outlet’s CEO, Ludmila Chekina, were both handed prison sentences of 12 years. Valeryia Kastsiuhova, founder and editor of website Nashe Mneniye, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
March also saw the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights report to the Human Rights Council on the situation in Belarus since May 2020. The report concluded that between 1 May 2020 and 31 December 2022, there were “reasonable grounds to believe” that several human rights violations were committed, including “arbitrary deprivation of the right to life and to liberty, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, denial of the rights to due process and to a fair trial, arbitrary denial of the right to enter one’s own country, violations of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association and to equal protection of the law”. Some of these violations, the Commissioner said, “may also amount to crimes against humanity”. The report calls for the release of all political prisoners and for an end to the systematic repression of critical voices.
On 23 March, 38 OSCE participating states invoked the Moscow Mechanism over the Lukashenka regime’s “alleged human rights violations”. This provides the opportunity for participating states to send missions of experts to investigate human rights and democracy-related problems in another state. It was last invoked in relation to Belarus in September 2020.
February 2023
The persecution of independent voices in Belarus continued in February.
The final arguments were heard in the bogus trial of Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and his two Viasna colleagues, with prosecutors demanding heavy prison sentences for each of them. The three defendants are dubiously accused of smuggling and financing acts that violate the public order; a verdict was expected on 3 March.
February also saw the beginning of another high-profile trial: that of NEXTA journalists Raman Pratasevich, Stsypan Putsila and Yan Rudzik. Although the latter two are being tried in absentia, Pratasevich is facing trial in person following many months of house arrest and various televised forced ‘confessions’. The three men each face more than ten separate charges relating to their media activities and opposition activism, and will receive long prison sentences if convicted.
Several heavy prison sentences were handed down this month. Journalist Andrzej Poczobut received eight years; editor Yury Hladchuk received 2.5 years; and two so-called ‘rail guerrillas’, Dzmitryi Klimau and Uladzimir Auramtsau, each received 22 years after they were convicted of destroying railway equipment in order to disrupt the movement of Russian military equipment in Belarus.
Mid-month, IFEX joined civil society organisations in urging the UN Human Rights council to establish an independent investigative mechanism in order to better hold President Lukashenka’s regime to account for its serious, ongoing human rights violations.
January 2023
President Lukashenka’s relentless “purge” of civil society in Belarus continues; January saw the launch of several high-profile, politically-motivated trials.
The long-awaited trial of Nobel Prize winner Ales Bialiatski and his Viasna colleagues Valiantsin Stefanovic and Uladzimir Labkovich began on 5 January. The defendants, who have been kept in a cage during the court hearings, are charged with “smuggling by an organised group” and “financing group actions that grossly violate public order”. They face between seven and 12 years in prison if convicted, and have already spent 18 months in pre-trial detention. Viasna is providing updates on their trial via Twitter and has invited the public to send messages of solidarity to the three men.
The trial in absentia of exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya began on 17 January. She is accused of treason and faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted. Her husband, Syarhei Tsikhanouski, is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Belarus for attempting to run against Lukashenka in the 2020 presidential elections; he now faces a further two years in prison if convicted on recently-brought charges of “violating prison rules”.
Several journalists also went on trial in January: Andrzej Poczobut faces 12 years in prison if convicted on charges of “calling for actions aimed at harming national security” and “inciting hatred”; Tut.by’s executive director Lyudmila Chekina and editor-in-chief Maryna Zolatava also face 12 years in prison if convicted on charges of tax evasion, “inciting social enmity”, and “calling for actions aimed at harming national security”.
In early January, Lukashenka signed a new law that allows the state to strip Belarusians in exile of their Belarusian citizenship if they are convicted of “extremist activities” or “causing grievous harm” to Belarus’s interests. As an article by Human Rights Watch explains, the state has been able to do this to naturalised Belarusian citizens since 2021; the new law extends these legal provisions to natural-born citizens. Journalists and activists convicted in absentia (as at least five were in January) could potentially be made stateless.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) published two reports this month that offer insights – from two different perspectives – into the brutal effects of Lukashenka’s crackdown on opposition voices and civil society. Their review of 2022 presents all the grim statistics of a year that saw 33 journalists behind bars, nine media outlets and 100 online sources declared “extremist organisations”, and 17 heavy prison sentences handed to media workers. The targeting of families is the focus of BAJ’s report entitled ‘Love behind bars’, which looks at couples (journalists and their partners) who have been arrested and/or imprisoned on spurious charges. Among these couples are former Index on Censorship and ARTICLE 19 employee Andrei Aliaksandrau, and his wife, Irina Zlobina: 12 January marked their second year behind bars.
Viasna’s new report about the crackdown on anti-war activists in Belarus is essential reading. In the first 50 days of Russia’s war on Ukraine (launched in February 2022), at least 1,500 people were detained for protesting both Russian aggression and the Lukashenka regime for helping to facilitate it.
This anti-war activism takes many forms. According to Viasna, 2022 saw 30 people convicted for taking photographs of Russian military equipment and passing these images to independent media; it also saw seven so-called ‘rail guerrillas’ handed extremely heavy sentences (over 20 years in prison in some cases) for disabling railway equipment in order to disrupt Russian military transportation. Viasna’s report looks at a selection of representative cases, including those where activists were arrested and/or beaten for wearing anti-war t-shirts, flying the Ukrainian flag, laying flowers outside the Ukrainian embassy, or shouting “Putin is a dickhead”.
Looking ahead to 2023
The trial of Ales Bialiatski and two Viasna colleagues is set to begin on 5 January 2023. Arrested in July 2021 as part of President Lukashenka’s “purge” of civil society, they are charged with “smuggling” cash and “financing group actions grossly violating the public order”; they face up to 12 years in prison if convicted.
In October 2022, Belarus withdrew from the First Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, meaning that individual victims of human rights violations in Belarus, who have been denied justice domestically, will no longer be able to bring their complaints to the UN Human Rights Committee. This decision comes into effect on 8 February 2023.
In late December, the state news agency published an article suggesting that Belarus could introduce anti-‘gay propaganda’ legislation, similar to Russia’s. The article quoted the Chair of the Council of the Republic of the National Assembly, Natalya Kochanova, who is supportive of such a law, and who ran Lukashenka’s election campaign in 2020.
December 2022
The impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine was also felt by civil society in neighbouring Belarus, where anti-war protesters were arrested and imprisoned, often solely for comments on social media that criticised Putin and the war.
President Lukashenka continued his crackdown on critical and opposition voices throughout the year.
In its annual overview, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) described 2022 as another “devastating year for media freedom”. The second half of 2022 saw draconian prison sentences handed down to several journalists; by the end of the year there were over 30 journalists behind bars (either convicted or in pre-trial detention). On 31 December, there were 1,448 political prisoners in Belarus.
The year also witnessed some disturbing legislative changes. May saw the widening of the application of the death penalty to include ‘attempted terrorism’. Rights advocates condemned the move, pointing to the vagueness of the Belarusian authorities’ definition of ‘terrorism’ and the frequency with which they have used “terrorism-related charges to prosecute political dissent”. As Amnesty International said, “opponents of the government now face the prospect of being shot if they dare to speak out”.
In December, lawmakers passed a bill that could, when signed into law by Lukashenka, be used to target Belarusian critics living abroad by stripping them of their citizenship.
The year also saw the work of human rights and press freedom advocates recognised: jailed human rights defender, Ales Bialiatski, won the Nobel Peace Prize; and IFEX member BAJ was awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.
November 2022
On 27 November, rights groups and others marked the Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus. According to human rights defenders Viasna, there are currently 1,445 political prisoners languishing in Belarusian prisons. Among these prisoners are several members of Viasna: some of these have already been convicted and handed heavy prison sentences on spurious charges; others are still awaiting trial after more than 500 days behind bars. Ales Bialiatski, founder of Viasna and recent winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is one of the latter. Charged with smuggling and financing protests, he faces between seven and 12 years in prison if convicted.
Another well-known political prisoner is Maria Kalesnikava (a member of the opposition Coordination Council), who was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2021 for her opposition activism. This month, it was reported that she had been placed in an isolation cell as punishment, apparently for ‘impoliteness’.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) marked the day of solidarity by urging the public to send letters of support to Belarus’s 32 jailed journalists. Several of these journalists have recently been added to the KGB’s ‘terrorist’ list.
October 2022
In recognition for his human rights work in Belarus, rights defender Ales Bialiatski was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October. Arrested in 2021 as part of President Lukashenka’s “purge” of civil society, Bialiatski is currently behind bars and faces between seven and 12 years in prison if convicted on spurious charges.
October continued the pattern of recent months, and saw several journalists handed draconian prison sentences solely for practising their profession or for voicing criticism of Lukashenka’s regime.
On 26 October, Siarhei Satsuk, chief editor of the independent Yezhednevnik news website, was convicted of taking a bribe, inciting hatred, and abusing power or authority: he was sentenced to eight years in prison. Earlier in the month, three former and current employees of the independent news agency BelaPAN were handed heavy prison sentences on a range of trumped-up charges: Andrei Aliaksandrau received 14 years, Dzmitry Navazhylau was given six years, and Iryna Leushyna was handed four years. Aliaksandrau’s wife, Iryna Zlobina, received a nine-year sentence.
There are currently over 1,330 political prisoners in Belarus. Two of these, Maryna Zolatava and Liudmila Chekina (respectively editor-in-chief and CEO of the independent news outlet TUT.BY), were added to the KGB’s growing list of “terrorists” on 20 October.
September 2022
September was a month of shocking prison sentences in Belarus, as the authorities continued their “purge” of civil society.
Early in the month, Viasna volunteer coordinator Marfa Rabkova and Viasna volunteer Andrei Chapiuk were handed 16 and six years in prison respectively on spurious charges related to the anti-Lukashenka rallies of 2020. The two have already been behind bars for approximately two years.
Their Viasna colleagues Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovich and Uladzimir Labkovich (all detained arbitrarily since 2021) now face harsher charges than those they were arrested on. According to Viasna, the three are currently accused of ‘smuggling’ cash across the border and ‘financing group actions that disrupt public order’. If convicted they each face between seven and 12 years in prison.
Others who received draconian prison sentences this month were journalist Dzianis Ivashyn, who was jailed for 13 years after he reported on the presence of former Ukrainian riot police in the Belarusian police force, and Belarusian PEN member Aliaksandar Fiaduta, who has handed a ten-year sentence for ‘conspiracy to seize power’.
There was also some welcome news in September: RFE/RL correspondent Aleh Hruzdzilovich was released from prison, where he’d been since December 2021; and Belsat TV journalist Darya Chultsova was released after serving a full two-year sentence. Both journalists had been dubiously convicted of participating in the mass protests that swept Belarus after August 2020’s disputed presidential election result.
There are currently over 1,330 political prisoners in Belarus, including 31 journalists. The Belarusian Association of Journalists got in touch with their families and friends recently and has provided an update on the jailed journalists’ situations.
August 2022
In Belarus, August saw the second anniversary of the disputed presidential election that returned Aleksandr Lukashenka to office. That result triggered a massive wave of popular protest across the country and an unprecedented crackdown on civic space by the authorities in response.
IFEX members marked the occasion with statements summarising the current, dire situation for independent media and human rights defenders in Belarus, and with calls for action from the international community.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) – liquidated by court order one year ago in Lukashenka’s “purge” of civil society – highlighted the several hundred journalists detained during the last two years, the closure of press outlets, and the increasing use of the ‘extremist’ label to undermine media. BAJ urged international colleagues to “appeal to your governments to use their political influence on the Belarusian authorities to restore freedom of expression in Belarus”.
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) called for further international efforts to pressure the Lukashenka government to “release journalists, trade unionists and all those who are in prison simply for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression”. There were also calls for greater international pressure on the government and declarations of solidarity with civil society from ARTICLE 19, the International Press Institute and PEN International.
Reporters Without Borders called on the international community to “provide concrete support” to independent Belarusian media and published interviews with journalists who had fled to exile from Belarus. PEN America urged the US to do more to address Lukashenka’s rights abuses, and called for a “consolidated effort to counter Belarusian tactics that involve internet censorship, prolonged detention in terrible conditions, and extensive torture”.
Many statements highlighted the Lukashenka government’s support for Russia’s attack on Ukraine (which included allowing part of the invasion to take place from inside Belarusian territory) and the detrimental effect that this has had on the situation of the Belarusian people. “The initial invasion of Ukraine has gravely undermined much of the world’s support for Belarus,” PEN America said. “More than ever, it is crucial to distinguish those who reside in Belarus from the cruel actions of Lukashenka’s Putin-backed regime.”
Protests by Belarusians against Russia’s war in Ukraine have resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of several rights defenders and activists. The Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna (which currently lists over 1,300 political prisoners in Belarus) has registered numerous criminal cases based on “anti-war and anti-Russian statements on social networks, dissemination of information about the movement of Russian troops on the territory of Belarus, and attempts to prevent the movement of military equipment on the railroad tracks”.
The case of student Danuta Peradnia is representative. She was sentenced to 6.5 years in prison last month (and placed on a list of ‘terrorists’) for allegedly reposting in a social media chat a text that criticised Putin and Lukashenka for the war.
August also saw developments in the cases of numerous persecuted journalists, including: BAJ board member Iryna Slaunikava, who was sentenced to five years in prison on charges of running an ‘extremist’ organisation; journalist Tatsiana Matsveyeva, who was sentenced to serve eight days’ detention for a Facebook post; and well-known editor Aksana Kolb, who announced this month that she had fled Belarus following a 30-month “open prison” sentence that was handed to her in June 2022.
The most recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus focuses on the situation of Belarusian citizens such as Kolb who have fled their country, and who cannot return home because of the “purposefully hostile environment” that makes it unsafe for them to do so.
The report (in which BAJ’s work features prominently) calls on the Belarusian government to put an end to the policies and practices that force citizens into exile and makes several recommendations, including: ending “the policy of eradication of civil society”; opening the information space and ending the persecution of the media; immediately and unconditionally freeing all those imprisoned for practising their civil and political rights; bringing to justice state officials involved in human rights abuses; and ending the persecution of Belarusian nationals in exile.
July 2022
In Belarus, the Lukashenka government’s intolerance of dissent was on full display in July when jailed journalist Katsiaryna Andrejeva was sentenced to serve a further eight years in prison on spurious treason charges. A correspondent for Belsat TV, Andrejeva was due for release in September 2022, by which time she would have completed a separate two-year sentence handed to her in 2021 for “organising mass protests”.
Andrejeva has been behind bars since November 2020, when she was arrested while reporting on an opposition rally in Minsk. The authorities declared her employer Belsat TV an “extremist organisation” in 2021. Anyone caught sharing its content faces 30 days’ detention.
Andrejeva’s case was one of a handful highlighted this month by the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, when she repeated her call on the Belarusian authorities to end their attacks on the press and release all journalists from detention.
Another case that Ribeiro pointed to was that of Intex-press reporter Yury Hantsarevich, who was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison for “facilitating extremist activities”. He is one of a number of detained journalists who have been forced by the authorities to confess to their ‘crimes’ on video (for later publication online).
Former NEXTA editor Raman Pratasevich is perhaps the most famous detainee to be forced by the authorities to make a confession for broadcast. He was arrested in May 2021 after the Belarusian authorities forced his Lithuania-bound Ryanair flight to land in Minsk. This month, following updates to their investigation, the UN aviation agency – the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) – formally blamed the Belarusian government for faking a bomb threat in order to force the flight to be re-routed. In doing so, the ICAO said, it had “endanger[ed] the safety of an aircraft in flight”, which “is an offence under the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the safety of Civil Aviation”.
Lukashenka’s ongoing crackdown on civil society claimed further victims this month, when the Supreme Court ruled to liquidate Belarus’s independent trade union movement. Several unions were accused of participating in ‘mass disorder’ and distributing ‘extremist’ material.
June 2022
The Belarusian Association of Journalists continues to record attacks on the independent press carried out by the authorities. In June, it published its 2022 list of jailed journalists, of which there were 29 (including ten women journalists). According to the organisation’s report, from the start of the year until 10 June, there were 19 detentions of members of the press and 24 property searches.
The trials of journalists and other independent voices continued in June. Among those cases of particular interest to IFEX members were:
- Philosopher and Belsat TV host Uladzimir Matskevich, sentenced to five years in prison at a closed trial on charges of creating an extremist group, insulting the president and public order offences. He had been in detention since August 2021.
- RFE/RL Freelancer Andrey Kuznechyk, sentenced to six years in prison on charges of creating an extremist group.
- Novy Chas chief editor Aksana Kolb, sentenced to 2.5 years’ imprisonment in an open correctional facility after being convicted of public order offences.
- Journalist Iryna Slaunikava, who went on trial on charges of leading an extremist group and organising activities that disrupt the social order; she faces seven years in prison if convicted.
- Journalists and activists Andrei Aliaksandrau, Iryna Zlobina, Dzmitry Navazhylau and Iryna Leushyna, who went on trial behind closed doors in the BelaPAN news agency case; they face several spurious charges ranging from tax evasion to treason.
There are currently 1,238 political prisoners in Belarus, more than double the amount this time last year. Rights organisation Viasna, whose chairperson Ales Bialiatski has been behind bars since July 2021, provides details of them all.
May 2022
On the International Day of Solidarity with Belarus (29 May), human rights advocates around the world showed their solidarity with the Belarusian people by calling for an end to President Lukashenka’s repression of the independent press and civil society, and for all political prisoners (there are currently 1,217) to be freed.
May saw a number of disturbing developments, the most alarming of which was the widening of the application of the death penalty to include ‘attempted terrorism’. Rights advocates condemned the move, pointing to the vagueness of the Belarusian authorities’ definition of ‘terrorism’ and the frequency with which they have used “terrorism-related charges to prosecute political dissent”. As Amnesty International said, “opponents of the government now face the prospect of being shot if they dare to speak out”.
The implications of this for Belarus’s opposition leaders are worrying: Maryia Kalesnikava (currently in prison) and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (currently in exile) are both on the KGB’s list of ‘terrorists’.
Also smeared as terrorists are exiled journalists Stsiapan Putsila and Yan Rudzik, who (it was reported this month) have been charged with “organisation and management of a terrorist organisation”. The charges are based on their work at NEXTA, an opposition Telegram channel that helped coordinate the anti-Lukashenka protests of 2020. NEXTA was founded by Putsila.
Sofia Sapega, arrested in May 2021 alongside former NEXTA editor Raman Pratasevich after the Belarusian authorities forced their flight to land in Minsk, was sentenced to six years in prison this month. She was convicted of ‘inciting social enmity and discord’ and ‘illegally collecting and disseminating information about the private life of an unnamed person without his consent’. Pratasevich is yet to go on trial and the status of the investigation against him is not clear.
The trials of several journalists are expected to begin in June, including that of former BelaPAN deputy director Andrei Aliaksandrau, who is facing numerous charges including tax evasion, participation in an extremist organisation and treason. Aliaksandrau, who previously worked at Index on Censorship and ARTICLE 19, faces 15 years in prison if convicted.
April 2022
On 20 April in Belarus, police – dressed in riot gear and wielding sledgehammers – raided the home of Novy Chas editor-in-chief Aksana Kolb. According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, Kolb told relatives that she would be detained for ten days; she has reportedly been charged with “organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order or active participation in them”.
This is not the first time that Kolb has been targeted by the authorities, who previously raided her home in October 2021, interrogated her, and forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement before releasing her. The independent Novy Chas ceased publishing in August 2021 and Kolb is one of 26 members of the press who are currently behind bars.
Another of those 26 prisoners is Belsat journalist Katsiaryna Andreyeva, who, according to statements made by her husband in April, has been charged with treason. She faces seven to 15 years in prison if convicted and her trial could take place in May. Andreyeva was detained whilst covering an anti-Lukashenka protest in November 2020 and has been behind bars ever since.
April saw the 26th anniversary of the renowned Belarusian rights organisation Viasna, seven of whose members – including founder Ales Bialiatski – are currently in prison. Two members – Marfa Rabkova and Andrey Chapiuk – were put on trial behind closed doors this month and face potential prison sentences of 20 years and eight years respectively if convicted on politically-motivated charges. According to Viasna, by 29 April there were 1,168 political prisoners in Belarus.
The Belarusian authorities also targeted Human Rights Watch this month, blocking access to its website just days after the organisation published a report on Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.
April ended on a high note, when IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) was awarded the 2022 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize. BAJ has been one of the leading free expression organisations in Belarus for decades, and has continued its vital work despite intense persecution, including a Supreme Court dissolution order in August 2021.
March 2022
At the 49th session of the UN Human Rights Council, a report on Belarus by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) laid bare the violations of rights that have taken place since the disputed presidential election of August 2020. Covering August 2020 to December 2021, the report includes several shocking statistics demonstrating the extent of the authorities’ efforts to – in the words of the OHCHR – “crush dissent and repress civil society”.
According to the OHCHR’s findings: more than 37,000 protesters were detained between May 2020 and May 2021; there are currently over 1,000 political prisoners; at least 270 NGOs had been shut down by October 2021; 36 lawyers who defended critics of the government had lost their licences by November 2021; and by the end of 2021, 32 journalists were behind bars, with 13 press outlets declared “extremist”.
March saw further dubious convictions of independent journalists and media workers, including Nasha Niva’s Yahor Martsinovich and Andrei Skurko (both sentenced to 2.5 years in prison), and former RFE/RL journalist Aleh Hruzdzilovich, who received a 1.5 year prison sentence.
The closed trial of Sofia Sapega began on 28 March. Sapega, who was arrested in May 2021 after the Belarusian authorities forced the plane that was carrying her (and her partner Raman Pratasevich) to land in Minsk, is charged with “inciting social hatred” and “violence or threats” against the police. The charges stem from her alleged role as administrator of a Telegram channel that published the personal data of security forces. She faces up to six years in prison if convicted.
February 2022
February ended with Belarus facing further sanctions, this time for helping facilitate Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The month began with 37 OSCE states calling on Lukashenka’s government to free the more than 1,000 political prisoners who are languishing in jail.
These OSCE states also asked the Belarusian authorities to: publish their full response to the Vienna Mechanism invocation; invite the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to monitor any criminal or administrative trials deemed of interest by the OSCE; and agree to an independent expert inquiry into reports of arbitrary detentions and the targeting of opposition figures.
Mid-month, IFEX joined other rights organisations in urging the UN Human Rights Council to renew the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’s examination of the human rights situation in Belarus.
February also saw the International Day of Solidarity with Belarus, which this year focused on independent Belarusian media. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) offered recommendations on how to show solidarity with the more than 30 journalists currently in jail and support independent press outlets. Free Press Unlimited called on the Media Freedom Coalition to renew its attention on “the dire situation” faced by independent media in the country.
Two overviews of 2021 – a year that saw a huge ramping up of pressure on civil society in Belarus – were published this month. BAJ’s report recorded 146 raids on journalists’ homes and offices during the year, with 13 media groups labelled “extremist” and 32 media workers still in jail at the end of December. PEN Belarus documented 1,455 violations of the cultural rights and human rights of cultural figures in 2021, more than 2.5 times the number recorded the previous year.
January 2022
In January, the US Justice Department charged four Belarusian government officials with conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy for their role in the 2021 forced landing in Belarus of a plane carrying NEXTA editor Raman Pratasevich. The charges followed the publication of a UN report which said that the Belarusian government’s claim that it had forced the plane down because of a bomb threat was “deliberately false”. Pratasevich, who faces a potential 15 years in prison in connection with the protests that followed the 2020 presidential election, was released from house arrest this month.
The authorities continue to persecute civil society organisations and journalists, including Aliaksandr Ivulin (jailed in January for two years for covering protests) and Sevyaryn Kvyatkouski (detained this month on his return to Belarus after spending six months abroad).
January also marked the one-year anniversary of the detention of journalist and rights defender Andrei Aliaksandrau and his partner Irina Zlobina. Index on Censorship and ARTICLE 19 launched a campaign calling for their release.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called this month for the Day of Solidarity with Belarus (9 February) to be dedicated to the “free media, journalists, bloggers, and all those who tell the truth about the situation in the country”.
December 2021
According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), 2021 saw 113 journalists arrested in Belarus, 32 of whom were still detained at the end of the year.
December was a month of heavy sentencing, seeing independent bloggers and members of the political opposition handed extremely lengthy jail terms on highly dubious charges. Those sentenced included Siarhei Tsikhanouski, a popular video blogger and husband of the exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya; he received an 18-year sentence. Bloggers Eduard Palchys and Ihar Losik, both of whom had already been in detention for well over a year, were handed prison sentences of 13 and 15 years respectively.
The month began with another wave of raids targeting rights activists and journalists. In mid-December, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Belarusian service was added to the government’s growing list of “extremist” organisations, meaning that Belarusians who subscribe to the service could face up to six years in prison. Shortly after RFE/RL’s new status was announced, one of its correspondents – Aleh Hruzdzilovich – was detained by masked men who broke into his home in Minsk.
IFEX members and other rights groups saw the fruit of their labour in December when the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention recognised former NEXTA blogger Raman Pratasevich as arbitrarily detained and called on the international community to press Belarus for his release. Pratasevich is currently under house arrest in an unknown location and faces up to 15 years in prison on charges of “organising mass riots”. It was revealed in December that his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, with whom Pratasevich was arrested after Belarus forced their Ryanair flight to divert to Minsk in May 2021, faces six years in prison on charges of inciting social hatred, damaging information security, mishandling private data, and threatening law enforcement.
For more on the state of media freedom in Belarus at the end of 2021, please take a look at BAJ’s recent overview.
November 2021
November saw Belarus’s government continue its crackdown on the independent press and civil society.
Early in the month, the authorities blocked access to the websites of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and PEN Belarus; they also declared the Belsat TV channel and the BelaPAN news agency ‘extremist formations’.
Around the same time, 35 OSCE states invoked the Vienna Mechanism to demand answers from the Belarusian government on the “serious human rights violations and abuses” that followed the disputed 2020 presidential election. Unsurprisingly, Belarus’s response did “not indicate a material change in the approach of the Belarusian authorities”.
The government’s absolute refusal to change course was further underlined in November during an interview that President Lukashenka gave to the BBC. When questioned about the 270 Belarusian civil society groups that had been forced to close since July 2021, he replied: “We’ll massacre all the scum that you [the West] have been financing”.
So far, Lukashenka’s repression of independent voices has resulted in over 880 political prisoners. Those prisoners were remembered in acts of solidarity around the world on the Day of Solidarity with Belarus’s Political Prisoners (27 November).
Among these prisoners, according to BAJ’s records, are 30 journalists. Since January 2020, BAJ has documented the detentions of over 580 members of the press. Its latest report (covering January to September 2021), also records more than 140 raids on journalists’ offices and homes, as well as access blocks on over 100 political and media websites.
For more on the persecution of Belarus’s journalists, you can watch a panel discussion organised this month by ARTICLE 19 and the International Press Institute, entitled ‘Reporting against all odds: Journalism in Belarus today [VIDEO]’. Speakers include Teresa Ribeiro, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, and Miklos Haraszti, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus.
October 2021
In Belarus, the Lukashenka government continued its efforts to stamp out political resistance and independence of thought as it tightened its chokehold on free expression, civil society and digital freedoms.
October saw the authorities announce a measure that would make subscribing to “extremist” independent Telegram channels, such as Nexta, a criminal offence, potentially punishable by up to seven years in prison (opposition activists point out, however, that there is no mention of criminal liability in the text). It also saw MPs unanimously pass a bill that would make calling for sanctions against Belarus a crime, and reports that the Ministry of the Interior is drawing up a list of “extremist” individuals.
Among those Telegram channels branded “extremist” was Golos (Voice), the official channel of the exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, against whom another criminal case was opened this month. Tsikhanouskaya has called for a day of solidarity with Belarus’s political prisoners, who now number over 830, in November.
Independent media were again in the firing line. A new case was opened against an unspecified number of Tut.by journalists, who are accused of inciting hatred and social discord, and who could face up to 12 years in prison if convicted. Employees of the independent newspaper Novy Chas were interrogated, and had their homes and offices searched by the authorities. The websites of Novy Chas, Deutsche Welle, and Current Time were also blocked.
Towards the end of October, attorneys representing the jailed former presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka were barred from practising by the authorities. In total, four of Babaryka’s legal representatives have been banned from their profession. Human Rights Watch reports that “at least 27 lawyers have already been banned or suspended in reprisal for speaking out against the recent wave of repressions”. And new restrictive amendments will come into force in November, increasing the Ministry of Justice’s authority over Belarusian lawyers and greatly restricting their independence.
Holding accountable those members of the Belarusian regime who have committed serious human rights violations is a long-term goal of many rights advocates. This month saw the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), together with the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), file a criminal complaint with the Attorney General in Germany against six high-ranking members of the Belarusian security apparatus for crimes against humanity.
For insightful discussion about the ‘Assault on Freedom of Expression and Human Rights in Belarus’, check out the video of this UN virtual side event, co-sponsored by various permanent missions, and by PEN America, Human Rights Watch, and the Committee to Protect Journalists. Speakers include Chair of PEN Belarus Svetlana Alexeivich, Anaïs Marin, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Rachel Denber from Human Rights Watch, Gulnoza Said from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Polina Sadovskaya from PEN America and others.
Also check out PEN Belarus’s recent report on the violation of cultural workers’ rights.
September 2021
The crackdown on civil society and independent media in Belarus continued throughout September, as did the international community’s efforts to hold President Lukashenka to account.
The Interactive Dialogue on the interim oral update of the OHCHR (Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) on the human rights crisis in Belarus took place on 24 September at the 48th Session of the Human Rights Council.
In her update to the Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, expressed her deep concern at Belarus’s “increasingly severe restrictions on civic space and fundamental freedoms”.
She pointed to: the 129 civil society organisations that have been closed down (or that are in the process of being liquidated by the authorities), including the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and PEN Belarus; the more than 650 political prisoners; the persistent allegations of “widespread and systematic torture” of detainees, and the lack of impartial investigations into these allegations; the 27 journalists who remain behind bars; and the “gender-based violence in detention”, noting that approximately 30% of those arbitrarily detained are women and girls.
ARTICLE 19, PEN America, IFEX, Access Now and International Media Support presented a statement during the session, in which we called on the OHCHR to examine and provide recommendations on the Belarusian government’s abuse of the legal system to criminalise the right to freedom of expression, and urged the Council to ensure that the examination of the human rights situation in Belarus is properly resourced.
The Human Rights Council continues to invite individuals and groups to submit information relevant to the mandate of the examination of the human rights situation in Belarus until 15 November 2021.
A new global report on internet freedom published this month by Freedom House revealed that Belarus was one of a handful of countries which had seen the greatest deterioration of online freedoms over the last year. Since the disputed presidential election in August 2020, the Belarusian authorities have been striving to restrict the information that citizens can access online. The blocking of websites, the forced deletion of content and the designation of huge amounts of content as ‘extremist’ “affirmed” the Freedom House report concludes, “that authorities view online activity as a primary driver of civic unrest”. Belarus joins five other countries from Europe and Central Asia in Freedom House’s “not free” category: the others are Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey and Azerbaijan – countries where civil society is also under significant pressure more generally.
September also saw:
- Maria Kalesnikava (who was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize this month) and Maxim Znak – both prominent leaders in the democratic opposition’s Coordination Council – handed prison sentences of 11 and ten years respectively on ludicrous charges of attempting to seize power and damage national security.
- A US House resolution decrying the Lukashenka regime’s brutal suppression of independent voices; the resolution was backed by PEN America, Amnesty International USA, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Reporters without Borders.
- Opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya meet with Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and urge support for RSF’s call on the EU to provide long-term assistance to Belarusian journalists and media outlets that have had to go into exile.
- Veteran journalist and former prisoner Yuliya Slutskaya named the 2021 World Press Freedom Hero by the International Press Institute and International Media Support.
- Renowned Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna launch its #FreeViasna campaign, calling for the release of seven Viasna human rights defenders, including its chairman Ales Bialiatski.
August 2021
August marked one year since the disputed presidential election in Belarus and saw the first anniversary of the ongoing crackdown on dissent. It also saw the Supreme Court order the liquidation of the country’s two most prominent free expression organisations: IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and the Belarus PEN Centre.
These closures by a politically-captured Supreme Court form part of an escalating crackdown on civil society, or – in President Lukashenka’s own words – a “purge”.
Before BAJ’s court hearing, IFEX called on the international community to pressure the Belarusian government to end the wave of persecution and reverse the dissolution of civil society groups. IFEX members ARTICLE 19 and Reporters Without Borders both submitted expert opinions to the Supreme Court, calling for the case against BAJ to be dismissed. In July, BAJ said that it would continue its activities even if it lost its legal status.
The repression of independent media also continues unabated. Mid-August saw the authorities raid the homes of journalists working for news agency BelaPAN and detain three staff. Belarus’s most popular independent news portal, tut.by, and an associated website, zerkalo.io, were designated “extremist”: anyone now sharing content from these sites could face jail time or fines.
There was also some good news this month, however: four members of Press Club Belarus, including its founder and directors, were released from pre-trial detention. They had been behind bars since late 2020 on dubious tax evasion charges, and their release was reportedly “an act of pardon”. The authorities dissolved Press Club Belarus in July.
Various IFEX members, including Reporters Without Borders, marked the one-year anniversary of the August 2020 presidential election by providing overviews of the 12 months of repression that followed. BAJ furnished us with the shocking statistics of a year that saw 497 detentions of journalists, 68 cases of violence against press workers, over 50 media representatives facing criminal prosecution and over 100 news and media sites blocked.
Index on Censorship, in partnership with Belarus Free Theatre, Human Rights House Foundation and Politzek.me, launched ‘Letters from Lukashenka’s Prisoners’, which gives Belarus’s political prisoners (of which there are currently 649), a voice by collecting, translating, and publishing letters on a weekly basis.
The US, UK and Canada also marked the election’s anniversary by announcing new trade, financial and aviation sanctions on Lukashenka’s regime.
To find out more about how Belarusian activists and journalists in the diaspora are using digital tools to thwart Lukashenka’s regime, see our recently-published regional spotlight: ‘The smartphone versus the baton’.
July 2021
July saw a huge ramping up of the persecution of independent voices in Belarus and, in President Lukashenka’s own words, a “purge” of civil society.
Dozens of NGOs are being targeted for liquidation (often for alleged registration errors), including IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) and PEN Belarus. During a wave of raids mid-month, at least 60 offices and homes of rights defenders were searched, over 30 people were interrogated, and 13 were detained. The organisations targeted include those working with vulnerable groups, such as children, senior citizens and people with disabilities. In public, Lukashenka has described these NGOs and their workers as “gangsters” and “foreign agents”; he has suggested that as many as 2,000 of them are in his sights.
The attempted purge has provoked global outrage. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called for an end to the harassment of civil society. IFEX members and 161 civil society organisations around the world called on the international community to hold the Belarusian authorities accountable for the attacks on NGOs. PEN America launched a letter-writing initiative (open to the public) to show solidarity with PEN Belarus.
One of the organisations raided by the authorities was Gender Perspectives, which works for gender equality and helps victims of domestic violence. Shortly after finding itself targeted, the organisation announced that it would be suspending its domestic violence hotline indefinitely.
Those who work in the arts are also under pressure. According to PEN Belarus’s recently published report, 621 culture sector workers had their human rights violated during the first half of 2021.
Early July saw the crackdown on Belarus’s embattled independent media intensify, with raids on offices and homes, and at least 30 arrests. By mid-July, there had been 63 raids and arrests targeting journalists and media outlets. Those targeted included Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, Nasha Niva and Belsat, which was officially declared extremist in late July (sharing or posting content from Belsat now carries a fine or jail time of up to 15 days).
Women have often been at the forefront of the resistance to the Lukashenka regime; according to BAJ, 16 of the 27 journalists currently detained and facing trial are women. This month, exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called for a day of solidarity with women in Belarus; in response, Justice for Journalists launched an appeal for letters of solidarity to be sent to women journalists jailed by the regime. For more on how women are trying to hold Lukashenka to account, take a look at the Coalition for Women in Journalism’s special report.
Tsikhanouskaya visited the US this month, where she attended the first Friends of Belarus congressional caucus group aimed at supporting the Belarusian democratic movement. She also spoke to PEN America about the current situation in her country and the future of the opposition movement: check out the podcast of the interview.
According to the Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna, there are currently 586 political prisoners in the country. One of them is the opposition presidential candidate Viktar Babaryka, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison this month on highly dubious corruption charges. The EU said that he had been jailed solely for exercising his political right to stand as a candidate in the 2020 presidential elections; it called for his immediate release and the release of all Belarus’s political prisoners.
Maxim Znak – Babaryka’s lawyer and a member of the pro-democracy Coordination Council of Belarus – will be tried behind closed doors in August with the detained opposition leader and fellow Coordination Council member Maria Kalesnikava. Both are charged with “conspiracy to seize state power in an unconstitutional manner” and “establishing and leading an extremist organization”.
At the end of the month, a group of organisations including ARTICLE 19 and Reporters Without Borders announced that they had filed a complaint to the United Nations’ Working group on arbitrary detention in the case of NEXTA editor Raman Pratasevich. Pratasevich has been detained (first in jail, now under house arrest) since May, when the Belarusian authorities forced his Ryanair flight to land in Minsk in order to arrest him.
June 2021
In Belarus, the month began with detained blogger and NEXTA editor Raman Pratasevich making two further apparently forced ‘confessions’, this time on state media. He ‘confessed’ to attempting to topple President Lukashenka, renounced his opposition activism, and declared that pre-trial detention was the “safest place” for him. By the end of the month, Pratasevich had been moved to house arrest.
Regional IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) was targeted again this month. The Ministry of Justice placed the independent press organisation under investigation and demanded that it present many thousands of documents dating back to January 2018, including financial records, membership lists, records of incoming and outgoing messages and more.
Independent media outlet TUT.BY is still in the authorities’ crosshairs. May saw raids on its offices, its website blocked, and 12 journalists arrested; June saw moves by the authorities to designate the news outlet ‘extremist’. In order to protect its staff before the organisation is officially designated ‘extremist’ TUT.BY has taken down its social media archive for the entirety of 2020 and first half of 2021.
There was shocking news at the end of the month when detained journalist Andrej Aliaksandraŭ was charged with high treason. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison. Aliaksandraŭ, who has been in custody since January, was previously charged with ‘organising and preparing actions grossly disturbing public order’. Those charges were based on allegations that he helped pay the fines of journalists and protesters who were detained in last year’s anti-Lukashenka demonstrations. Had it not been for the new charge, Aliaksandraŭ would have been released in July (having spent the maximum time allowable in custody pending trial).
June also saw:
- IFEX members issue a joint call to the international community to make respect for press freedom a cornerstone of all demands made towards Belarus. The statement also calls for the use of targeted sanctions on individual members of the Lukashenka regime (so as to avoid inflicting the harm that blanket sanctions might have on the Belarusian people), and for increased support to threatened journalists in Belarus.
- The UK, US, Canada and the EU working in parallel to impose sanctions against 11 individuals and 2 entities of the Belarusian regime. The sanctions come in response to the detention of Pratasevich and Sofia Sapega.
- IFEX members and other rights groups calling – ahead of the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council – for the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Belarus.
- Human Rights House Foundation, PEN America, and the Permanent Mission of Lithuania to the UN in Geneva organise a webinar, ‘Media Under Attack in Belarus’. Speakers included the UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus, numerous foreign ministers from central and eastern Europe, ambassadors and other experts. You can view a video of the event online.
- Forty-seven civil NGOs call on the food manufacturer Nestlé to stop advertising on Belarusian state television (1 in 3 paid commercials on state TV are paid for by Nestlé).
- UN experts describe Belarus as a “black hole” for media freedom, call for all journalists and rights activists to be released, and express “serious concern” about recent amendments to the Mass Media Law and the Law on Mass Gatherings, which impose draconian restrictions on journalists and protesters.
- The EPP Group (the largest and oldest group in the European Parliament) call for the establishment of an international tribunal to try President Lukashenka and others for their role in the repression of Belarusian citizens.
- Belarus’s government impose tighter restrictions in order to make it more difficult for Belarusians to leave the country. Although the new rules were ostensibly introduced to stop the spread of COVID-19, the authorities have been concerned for some time by the prospect of a mass flight of medical professionals, IT experts and other high-skilled workers.
May 2021
Even those of us who are used to reading about the ongoing, massive human rights violations in Belarus were shocked by events this month.
On 23 May, Raman Pratasevich, founder and editor of the independent Telegram channel NEXTA, and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were arrested after their Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius was forced by the Belarusian authorities to reroute and make an emergency landing in Minsk. The Belarusian government said that it had forced the rerouting because of an emailed bomb threat; however, news reports revealed that the cited threat was actually sent after the plane had been diverted.
Pratasevich had been a target for some time. The Belarusian authorities had previously sought to extradite him from Poland because of his work at NEXTA, labelled “extremist” by a Minsk court in 2020. NEXTA is extremely popular and has been sharing news and information about the anti-Lukashenko protests that have been going on since the disputed presidential election of August 2020.
The day after Pratasevich’s arrest, he appeared in a video declaring that he was being treated well, that he was cooperating with the authorities, and that he was responsible for “organising mass riots” (for which he could face up to 15 years in prison). The video bore all the hallmarks of a forced confession: Pratasevich’s face showed bruising.
Sapega also appeared in a video ‘confessing’ to revealing information about Belarusian security officials via the Telegram channel ‘Black Book of Belarus’. According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) she has been charged with “incitement of racial, ethnic, religious or other social hatred or discord” and faces up to 12 years in prison.
The forced rerouting of the flight (described as a “hijacking” by the President of the EU Commission) and the arrest of Pratasevich and Sapega provoked international outrage. Heads of state, foreign ministers, MEPs and NGOs were quick to demand Pratasevich’s release and call for further measures to be taken against Lukashenka’s regime.
US President Biden called for an investigation and committed to imposing further sanctions . The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez issued a joint statement with his counterparts in the Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Lithuania, Ireland, Poland and the UK, also calling for sanctions, and a ban on flights over Belarus. The European Council agreed to an extension of targeted economic sanctions and a ban on Belarusian airlines entering EU airspace. MPs in the UK called on the UK government to block the Lukashenka regime’s access to finance through the London Stock Exchange. Lithuania’s Prosecutor General’s office agreed to investigate Lukashenka for “criminal hijacking”, following a complaint filed by Reporters Without Borders. Members of the Media Freedom Coalition (IFEX is a member of the Media Freedom Coalition Consultative Network) demanded the release of Pratasevich and all jailed journalists in Belarus.
IFEX members also raised their voices in protest. ARTICLE 19, the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), the Committee to Protect Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists, Free Press Unlimited, Human Rights Watch, Index on Censorship, PEN America, PEN International and Reporters Without Borders issued statements calling for the immediate release of Pratasevich, Sapega, and all political prisoners and journalists in Belarus.
Within days of the forced rerouting of Pratasevich’s flight, airlines had begun avoiding Belarusian airspace. International cultural organisations also acted on their concerns about Lukashenka’s human rights abuses: the European Broadcasting Union suspended Belarusian member BRTC, citing the broadcasting of “interviews apparently obtained under duress”; the European Cycling Union cancelled the 2021 Elite Track European Championships scheduled to take place in Minsk in June.
Although the arrest of Pratasevich and Sapega dominated the headlines, it was only one of the many disturbing events and acts of repression that took place in May. Others included:
- The sudden death in prison of opposition activist Vitold Ashurak, who had been serving a five-year sentence for taking part in anti-Lukashenka protests. According to the prison authorities, Ashurak died of a heart attack; however, his family responded that he had no history of heart problems and a preliminary death certificate said that the cause of death was yet to be determined. Prominent human rights activist Ales Bialiatski (a former political prisoner himself) highlights the many unanswered questions about Ashurak’s death in this article.
- A raid on the Minsk studio of independent broadcaster Belsat TV on 21 May. Security agents arrested six staff, each of whom were later sentenced to fifteen days’ detention.
- A raid on the offices and homes of journalists of the independent news portal TUT.BY on 18 May as part of a tax investigation. At least 12 staff were detained and the organisation’s website was blocked. Yuliya Charnyauskaya, the widow of TUT.BY’s founder, is under house arrest and her lawyer has been prohibited from revealing the charges she faces.
- A highly questionable ‘confession’ by a detained member of PEN Belarus, Aliaksandr Fiaduta. Fiaduta was detained by the KGB in April on accusations of involvement in a plot to assassinate Lukashenko. He reportedly confessed to being part of a “conspiracy” in a statement sent this month to newspaper Narodnaya Volya, and said that he had not been tortured.
- The sentencing of seven civil society activists, including six members of the European Belarus campaign, to between four and seven years’ imprisonment for their opposition activism.
- The blocking of access to the human rights legal support website Probono.by.
Also in May, Lukashenka signed into law amendments aimed at suppressing protests and media freedom: all demonstrations will now need to be officially authorised; media coverage of protests, opposition activities and socio-political subjects will be greatly restricted, as BAJ explains.
Lukashenka also signed a decree allowing the transfer of presidential powers to Belarus’s Security Council (comprised of supporters of the president, including his son) if he is killed or otherwise unable to perform his duties.
International concern about the rights situation in Belarus has been ongoing since last summer’s presidential election, when Lukashenka initiated the current crackdown on independent voices. On 21 May, 37 OSCE states repeated their call on Belarus to implement the Moscow Mechanism report recommendations, investigate reports of human rights violations and abuses, and engage in dialogue in order to address the current crisis. Earlier in the month, the US Congressional Human Rights Commission held a hearing on the human rights situation in Belarus. Among the witnesses were Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya and Gulnoza Said of the Committee to Protect Journalists; Freedom House also submitted a statement. You can watch a video of the hearing on the Commission’s website.
According to the Belarusian human rights organisation Viasna, there are currently 451 political prisoners in Belarus. At the end of the month, BAJ reported that there were 34 journalists and media workers behind bars.
April 2021
If you thought the situation for journalists in Belarus couldn’t get much worse, April had a nasty surprise for you. The month saw lawmakers approve legislation which would drastically restrict the journalistic activities of the country’s already embattled independent media.
Both the Belarusian Association of Journalists and Human Rights Watch detail some of the most disturbing changes contained in this legislation, including: making it illegal for journalists to “discredit” the state, thereby effectively prohibiting any criticism of the government; enabling the authorities to strip journalists of accreditation for allegedly committing a crime while carrying out professional duties; and banning journalists from livestreaming mass unauthorised (i.e all) protests.
The authorities continue to persecute independent, critical voices. Bloggers Sergei Petrukhin and Alexander Kabanov were sentenced to three years in prison this month for “organising” protests ahead of the disputed presidential election of August 2020. The Prosecutor General tried – and failed – to have the sentence handed to jailed journalist Katsyaryna Barysevich increased; she will be released in May.
Extremely worrying is the case of writer and Belarusian PEN member Aliaksandr Fiaduta, who was detained in Moscow mid-month by the Russian FSB working with the Belarusian KGB and transferred back to Belarus. It is not known what charges he faces, although media outlets report bizarre accusations made by President Lukashenko that Fiaduta and another detained man were part of a US-backed plot to assassinate him.
Following the news about the “assassination plot”, Lukashenka announced that he would amend the law on presidential succession so that power will be handed to the National Security Council (of which his eldest son is a prominent member) in the event of the president dying in office.
Fiaduta is not the only target of dubious accusations. In late March, the Attorney General’s Office opened a “terrorism” case against exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.
April also saw a number of human rights reports published, each of which underlines Belarus’s worsening rights situation since August 2020:
- The 2021 Annual Report of the partner organisations to the Council of Europe’s Safety of Journalists Platform highlights the situation in Belarus, even though it lies outside the Platform’s system, because of the scale of the crackdown on the media. The report calls on “Council of Europe member states to put geopolitical considerations aside and take an unambiguous stance regarding this unprecedented wave of attacks on independent journalism in a country in the middle of Europe”.
- PEN America’s Freedom to Write Index 2020, which looks at the free expression situation for writers and public intellectuals globally, revealed that Belarus is now the fifth worst country in the world for putting intellectuals, writers and artists behind bars (only China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran are worse).
- Reporters Without Borders’ 2021 World Press Freedom Index now ranks Belarus 158th out of 180 countries evaluated, making it the lowest placed country in Europe.
- Amnesty International’s 2020/21 Report details the Belarusian authorities’ mass violations of human rights, their systematic use of torture against people detained during the anti-Lukashenka protests, and their refusal to grant the victims the opportunity to seek justice. According to Amnesty, “The Belarusian authorities admitted receiving some 900 complaints of abuse by police in connection with the protests but by the end of the year not a single criminal investigation had been opened, nor had any law enforcement officer been charged with respective violations.”
In response to the ongoing rights violations, the US announced on 19 April that it would re-impose sanctions on nine state-owned enterprises. And on 21 April, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a resolution calling for Council of Europe member states to exercise universal jurisdiction, apply “Magnitsky”-style sanctions to hold Belarusian officials accountable, and demand that Belarus release all political prisoners.
For updates on how the country’s culture sector is faring under the crackdown check out PEN Belarus’s latest issue of Cultural Resistance in Belarus. Also take a look at this interview with the independent Belarusian journalist Hanna Liubakova, who reports that one positive aspect of the current situation in Belarus is the citizens’ growing trust in and appetite for independent journalism.
March 2021
The repression of critical voices in Belarus is ongoing, and journalists, human rights defenders and civil society organisations continue to be targeted by the authorities. Local IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) has been under pressure for months. In an article published this month, BAJ’s leadership describes this persecution, which has included office closures, home searches, police questioning and other harassment.
March saw numerous acts of solidarity and developments in the campaign to hold President Lukashenka’s regime to account for its appalling human rights violations:
- 25 March – “Freedom Day” – saw activists, politicians and journalists around the world engaging in public acts of solidarity with the people of Belarus. Peaceful Freedom Day celebrations resulted in 245 arrests in the country.
- Over 50 journalists’ organisations wrote to European heads of state, urging them to demand that Belarus release all jailed journalists, and asking them to appeal to the UN, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and the EU to take more action against the Belarusian authorities.
- The European Federation of Journalists, ARTICLE 19, and Human Rights Watch (HRW) joined other rights groups in calling on the UN Human Rights Council to “create a new mechanism assisting the process of accountability for human rights violations in Belarus”.
- The UN Human Rights Council adopted Resolution A/HRC/46/L.19 which requests the UN Human Rights Commissioner to collect and analyse information on the human rights situation in Belarus with regard to the 2020 presidential election and subsequent crackdown on opposition voices.
- Human rights groups led by the Danish anti-torture organisation DIGNITY launched an International Accountability Platform for Belarus; the project will bring together local and regional rights groups to document and verify evidence of human rights abuses. The initiative has been endorsed by 19 states.
- IFEX launched a new webpage, “Repression and resistance in Belarus: A monthly chronology”, which brings together all the updates from our monthly briefs detailing the work of our members and other actors, and highlighting other key developments in Belarus.
- Belarus was disqualified from taking part in Eurovision 2021 after it submitted two songs, both of which were deemed to have broken the rules by entering politicised songs (the first entry contained not-so-subtle pro-regime lyrics).
Some of the individual cases of persecuted activists or journalists that IFEX members highlighted this month included: journalist Katsiaryna Barysevich, who was jailed for six months over her coverage of protests; renowned translator Volha Kalackaja, who was sentenced to two years of house arrest on charges of “malicious hooliganism” (she had been held in pre-trial detention for two months); journalist Dzyanis Ivashin, who was arrested after he published a story about former Ukrainian riot police joining the Belarusian police force; and punk musician Ihar Bantsar, who was sentenced to 1.5 years’ restricted freedom on “hooligan” charges this month and released with a travel ban. Bantsar, who had been in jail since October 2020, had been on hunger strike for approximately two weeks.
For recent updates on how the crackdown is affecting Belarus’s cultural sector, take a look at PEN Belarus’s latest edition of Cultural Resistance in Belarus. For some legal analysis of the Belarusian authorities’ abuse of “extremism” and “hate speech” legislation to silence opposition voices, please see this report by ARTICLE 19 and Human Constanta. For more about the impact of Lukashenko’s crackdown on independent journalists and their families, see HRW’s recent report. Also, check out BAJ’s report on the persecution of Belarusian media in 2020, which looks at the situation before and after the presidential elections.
February 2021
With the crackdown on independent media and opposition activists continuing into February, ARTICLE 19, the Belarusian Association of Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists and Index on Censorship joined other rights groups in a joint call for the immediate release of all journalists detained in Belarus. Among those journalists were Belsat reporters Katsiaryna Andreyeva and Daria Chultsova who, mid-month, were sentenced to two years in prison – solely for reporting on a protest in November 2020.
Mid-month also saw police raids on rights organisations’ offices and, in some cases, their members’ homes. Among the groups targeted was local IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ). BAJ’s chairman Andrei Bastunets was briefly detained while officers searched his office. The organisation’s premises were also sealed, seriously obstructing its work.
Towards the end of the month, at the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights presented her report on the situation in Belarus in which she detailed ongoing, serious rights violations and made multiple recommendations with regard to redress for victims and the improvement of the rights environment generally. At the enhanced interactive dialogue session, ARTICLE 19 and BAJ delivered an oral statement calling on the Council to put “greater accountability mechanisms in place to collect and preserve evidence of crimes under international law, and ultimately ensure that perpetrators are held accountable”.
January 2021
In Belarus, the popular protests against President Lukashenka’s regime continue, as do the arrests and harassment of the independent press and activists. IFEX members highlighted three cases of detained writers or journalists this month: translator Volha Kalackaja, detained for supporting the peaceful protests; journalist Andrei Aliaksandrau, detained for allegedly organising mass protests; and journalist Ihar Losik, accused of organising “mass riots” and currently on hunger strike.
Lukashenka’s propaganda machine suffered a blow in January when the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) axed Belarus as one of the two hosts of the world championship scheduled to take place in May and June. Cancelling the events in Minsk was one of the requests made by International Media Support (IMS) and the European Federation of Journalists when they wrote to the IIHF’s president, René Fasel, earlier in the month. Fasel had seemed reluctant to punish Belarus, but businesses sponsoring the tournament began to withdraw fearing bad publicity: money obviously talks.
Exiled opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has declared a Day of Solidarity with Belarus on 7 February, providing rights organisations with a useful date around which to coordinate advocacy.
Please check out PEN Belarus’s new report on the persecution of the cultural sector. According to their findings, at least 500 individuals working in this sector have had their rights violated by the authorities in 2020.
December 2020
While the authorities continue to target independent press and opposition voices in Belarus, international pressure on the regime is escalating.
December saw:
- a joint statement by IFEX members and PEN Belarus on International Human Rights Day, calling for immediate investigations into the human rights abuses of the Lukashenka regime and redress;
- a further round of EU sanctions imposed on “high-level officials responsible for the ongoing violent repression”;
- sanctions imposed by the International Olympic Committee – including a ban on President Lukashenka attending the Olympic Games – because the Belarusian National Olympic Committee had not “appropriately protected… Belarusian athletes from political discrimination”;
- a criminal probe launched by Lithuania against Belarusian regime officials over alleged torture of detained opposition activists;
- 42 states at the Human Rights Council (HRC) session on Belarus condemning the authorities’ repression of the independent press and calling for the implementation of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism report recommendations on freedom of expression and the media;
- the launch of an online platform – an initiative of opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya – to collect evidence that will be used in future prosecutions of those who are implicated in the regime’s human rights abuses.
IFEX members continued to press for justice in Belarus. PEN America and PEN International collaborated on a statement with PEN Belarus, which the president of that centre, writer Svetlana Alexievich, delivered via video at the aforementioned HRC session. PEN America also launched a series of video statements by prominent US politicians expressing solidarity with those targeted by the Belarusian regime.
Promoting awareness of the events in Belarus, Reporters Without Borders published videos of interviews with three Belarusian journalists: Natalya Lubneuskaya, Ihar Karnei and Marina Zolotova, the editor of popular news website TUT.by.
This month, ARTICLE 19 continued to add to its own series of videos of interviews with rights activists and members of the independent media.
In late December, the Polish Association of Journalists, in cooperation with the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, the Belarusian Association of Journalists and the European Federation of Journalists launched an online book entitled I am a journalist. Why do you beat me?, which, via interviews with Belarusian journalists, documents the regime’s persecution of independent media.
Also in late December, Press Club Belarus founder and BAJ board member Yulia Slutskaya was detained and dubiously charged with “large-scale tax evasion”; if convicted, she could face up to seven years in prison. International Media Support (IMS) called for the charges against her to be dropped, for her immediate release, and for the release of all her detained Press Club colleagues.
November 2020
November was another month of repression, resistance and tragedy in Belarus. But it was also one that saw great acts of global solidarity and a ramping up of international pressure on President Lukashenka’s regime.
Mid-month, IFEX member the Belarusian Association of Journalists won the First Canada-UK Media Freedom Award in recognition of its stellar work in the face of the ongoing, brutal crackdown on the opposition and independent media. Around the same time, the Belarus Free Theatre (a theatre group that has fought against the regime for many years) was awarded the Magnitsky Human Rights Award for Courage under Fire. (This followed on nicely from last month, which saw the 2020 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded to Belarus’s democratic opposition.) Another highly significant act of solidarity took place towards the end of November, when US President-elect Joe Biden invited exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya to his inauguration in January 2021.
November also saw EU foreign ministers agree to push ahead with a new round of sanctions targeting senior officials in Lukashenka’s regime and entities that finance his government. Rights experts also delivered important statements and reports: UN Special rapporteurs called for an independent investigation into violence against protesters and condemned the targeting of women human rights defenders; an EU resolution condemned the murder of protester Raman Bandarenka and demanded an investigation into the many rights violations carried out by Lukashenka’s regime; a hard-hitting OSCE report under the Moscow Mechanism was published, calling for new elections in line with international standards, the release of all prisoners held for political reasons and the establishment of an independent, international investigation into all allegations of torture and ill-treatment.
The numbers of arrests and rights violations that have taken place over the last few months is staggering. A document leaked this month showed that almost 26,000 people had been detained since the rigged presidential election on 9 August. According to statistics collated by the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 393 journalists have been detained, beaten or harassed by the authorities since the day of the election.
To stay up to date with the rights situation in Belarus, check out the work of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, the European Federation of Journalists, PEN Belarus, the Belarus Free Theatre, Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, ARTICLE 19, PEN International and PEN America.
October 2020
In Belarus, the huge, overwhelmingly peaceful protests against President Lukashenka’s regime continue – as does the brutal response by state authorities.
October saw the 2020 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded to Belarus’s democratic opposition (which includes the Coordination Council – formed after the rigged presidential election in August – and other prominent civil society figures). The month once again saw many hundreds of protesters arrested, including workers planning to take part in a national strike; it also saw the popular Telegram channel NEXTA designated “extremist” by the authorities (NEXTA is an independent news resource that shares videos and photos related to the protests).
The Belarusian Association of Journalists, in collaboration with other rights groups, this month produced a detailed report on the human rights situation in Belarus post-election – please check it out.
September 2020
In Belarus, the huge demonstrations calling on President Lukashenka to step down continued in September, as did the brutal tactics employed by the authorities to repress these overwhelmingly peaceful protests. The month saw further persecution of journalists and many hundreds of protesters detained: so far, there have been an estimated 12,000 arrests since the rigged presidential election in August.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report showing that hundreds of these detainees were subjected to systematic beatings and torture whilst in custody. According to HRW, the victims described beatings, prolonged stress positions, electric shocks and rape; many had serious injuries, “including broken bones, cracked teeth, skin wounds, electrical burns, and mild traumatic brain injuries”.
The authorities continued to target prominent independent and opposition voices, including members of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and Belarusian PEN. The most high profile arrests included those of opposition leader Maryia Kalesnikava and lawyers Maksim Znak and Illya Saley, all of whom are ranking members of the Coordination Council (the opposition organisation set up after the presidential election). They are all accused of attempting to harm Belarus’s national security.
The Internationally renowned writer and president of Belarusian PEN, Svetlana Alexievich, was (until she left the country for medical treatment in late September) the only member of the Coordination Council still in Belarus who was not in jail. Early in the month she reported that she was being harassed at her home by masked men in plain clothes. In response, diplomats from at least seven countries rushed to her home to protect her.
Mid-month, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) announced an independent expert investigation into the repression in Belarus and the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution setting in motion close UN human rights monitoring of the situation.
Towards the end of the month, there were reports that the US, UK and Canada were close to imposing sanctions on Belarusian officials.
August 2020
The presidential election in Belarus on 9 August was conducted the way many previous elections were conducted: opposition candidates were harassed and hounded out of the country; peaceful protesters, activists, journalists and independent election monitors were detained; and, of course, the final vote count that handed President Lukashenka victory (once again) was highly dubious.
However, what was new was the scale and passion of the protests that followed the vote, which saw many tens of thousands take to the streets all over the country calling for free elections and for President Lukashenka to go. The violence with which this political dissent was met stunned the international community. There have been mass protests before – and also shockingly violent responses from the Belarusian authorities – but the latest protests are huge, still ongoing, and have spread to sections of society that aren’t usually seen at political demonstrations. Some commentators are speculating about whether Lukashenka can hang on to power.
IFEX members have been working hard to keep us informed about the ever-evolving situation. The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ), ARTICLE 19, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the International Press Institute, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Free Press Unlimited have been invaluable sources of information for the latest news on attacks on the press, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.
Many scores of journalists have been detained and beaten by the police. In one day alone (27 August), approximately 50 were detained for merely covering the protests. At least 17 journalists working for foreign media have had their press accreditation withdrawn; some will be deported. Several thousand protesters have also been detained and there is very credible evidence of the widespread use of torture against detainees. Alongside these brutal tactics, the Belarusian authorities have intermittently shut down access to the internet in order to control information and impede the protesters from organising.
State news journalists have shown solidarity with their colleagues in the independent press. Several went on strike demanding that they be allowed to report the protests accurately. Many resigned their posts; some were fired.
However, the roles that the departing journalists left vacant have mostly been filled by state TV journalists from Russia. Belarusian state TV is now portraying the protesters as agents of the west.
The unfair election and the crackdown on protesters and journalists have been condemned internationally, including by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Special Rapporteurs.
Mid-month, the European Federation of Journalists called on the EU to impose sanctions on individuals complicit in the crackdown. By the end of August, the EU had agreed to impose sanctions on up to 20 senior Belarusian officials.
July 2020
In Belarus, presidential elections are set to take place on 9 August. The incumbent, President Lukashenka, has been in power for 26 years and has a long history of dealing ruthlessly with any opposition – often jailing their candidates or barring them from appearing on the ballot (as happened this month). The last two months have seen hundreds of people arrested at peaceful protests calling for democratic change. Independent journalists and bloggers have also been targeted, with numerous reporters beaten up by police at demonstrations. The Belarusian Association of Journalists has been posting regular updates on its website and this month called for an end to the persecution of journalists.
