MINSK — Belarusian lawmakers have approved a second reading of several amendments to legislation severely restricting civil rights and the free flow of information amid a crackdown on the country’s pro-democracy movement.
The bills approved by members of the lower house on April 16 define a broad range of activities as “extremist,” providing additional ammunition for authorities to use draconian tactics to target and intimidate protesters and opposition forces challenging the official results of a presidential election last year that handed authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka his sixth consecutive term.
In the wake of the election, thousands of Belarusians have taken to the streets in what has become the largest and most-persistent show of opposition to Lukashenka. More than 33,000 people have been arrested in a crackdown that has left much of the opposition leadership in exile or prison. The European Union, the United States, and other nations have refused to recognize the declared election results and slapped sanctions on Lukashenka and other senior Belarusian officials.
The new amendments are likely to spark an outcry for further action.
According to the amendments, any activities by individuals, political parties, or domestic or international organizations defined as undermining independence, sovereignty, the constitutional order, and public safety will be considered as “extremist.”
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
If approved and signed into law, the amendments would ban lawyers from defending people in some criminal and administrative cases. Most of the lawyers who worked with the Belarusian Association of Journalists and have defended RFE/RL reporters in recent months have already been stripped of their licenses.
The proposed changes also say that the following actions will be considered as extremist activities: the distribution of false information; insulting an official; discrediting the state; impeding activities of the Central Election Commission and other state organs; and participating in or organizing unauthorized mass protests.
One passage of the amendments says that any materials promoting unsanctioned public events that can be read, sung, or shown will be considered as “extremist symbols.” That includes portraits of anyone who was legally found to be an extremist.
In other parts, amendments to the law on media will allow authorities to shut down media outlets after they receive warnings if their activities pose a “threat to the country’s national security.”
The amendments also expand the ability of authorities to limit access to online publications if they carry information banned for distribution and refuse to follow requests by officials to address violations.
Lawmakers also approved in a second reading of amendments to the Criminal Code. Among other things, the changes would toughen punishment for disobeying, threatening, and assaulting law enforcement.
Another amendment would prohibit live coverage of unsanctioned protests, making journalists a target for attending such events.
Amendments to other existing laws dealing with extremism would give law enforcement officers the right to use firearms at their own discretion without waiting for a command from supervisors. Police would also be given the right to create lists of individuals they feel are inclined to participate in extremist activities.
Once on such a list, a person would be banned from some activities, including journalism, publishing, and teaching, while their financial activities would be put under surveillance. The amendments allow the central bank to monitor cash withdrawals through foreign-issued debit cards and limit such withdrawals, as well as to freeze the bank accounts of “suspicious individuals.”
Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska Watch Docs Film Festival
Tom Grater in Deadline.com of 14 April 2021 reports how an unusual collective of human rights organizations, film festivals and industry have called for the release of Tatsiana (Tanya) Hatsura-Yavorska, the director of the Watch Docs Festival in Belarus, who was arrested on April 5 for her role in organizing an underground photo exhibition celebrating health workers.
The Human Rights Film Network and the International Coalition for Filmmakers at Risk have put out a joint open letter calling on authorities to release Hatsura-Yavorska, who is regarded as a political prisoner, as well as others who have been incarcerated in the country. The letter has been signed by a broad selection of film festivals and organizations including Sundance and Berlin.
“We urge the Belarusian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release our colleague Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska and other human rights defenders, and to end acts of judicial harassment against them,” the letter reads. You can see it in full here.
Following the event that she jointly organized, which was titled Machine Is Breathing, and I Am Not and was dedicated to the country’s medics and their battle during the pandemic, Hatsura-Yavorska was initially fined 700 Belarusian rubles for “protesting against police” and placed in a detention facility. She has not been released and is now facing trial on charges of ‘raising money for protests’, with her court hearing set to take place 16 April according to those close to her. It is thought she could face several years in prison.
Maciej Nowicki, Director of Poland’s Watch Docs Film Festival, told Deadline that “it is still unclear on what grounds” Hatsura-Yavorska is being prosecuted.
“Numerous reports by the UN, other international organizations and NGOs, unfortunately, have documented various types of violations of law and human rights in Belarus, including the rights of persons deprived of their liberty. This is why we are truly concerned about Tanya,” he continued. “Tanya is an amazing and beautiful person, as well as a very strong one. But now she needs our solidarity.”
A collection of Belarusian organizations and associations also released a statement this weekend, which read: “We consider the persecution of Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska by the authorities to be politically motivated, aimed at stopping her public and non-violent activities aimed at protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
Elsewhere, Filmmaker Mark Cousins penned an article for The Guardian expressing his support for Hatsura-Yavorska, detailing how he interacted with the festival exec though his work with the Belfast Film Festival. “Nonfiction cinema is our lingua franca. Those who speak it to governments should be defended,” Cousins wrote.
MINSK — Yuras Zyankovich, a Belarusian lawyer who also has U.S. citizenship, has been detained in Moscow and transferred to a detention center in Minsk amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent in Belarus following a disputed presidential election last year.
Zyankovich’s wife, Alena Dzenisavets, told RFE/RL on April 13 that Russian security officers “abducted” her husband from the Nordic Rooms Hotel in Moscow on April 11 and brought him to the Belarusian capital.
“I learned about that only yesterday. I talked to a manager of the hotel. According to him, the hotel’s personnel saw how men in civilian clothes took Yuras away, saying that he was suspected of terrorism. They showed their documents saying that they are from security organs,” Dzenisavets said, adding that Zyankovich is currently in the detention center for the Belarusian Committee of State Security (KGB) in Minsk.
Yuras Zyankovich, who used to be a regional leader of the opposition Belarusian Popular Front (BNF) party and once sought to be its presidential candidate, has been living in the United States since 2007.
He is a graduate of Fordham University’s School of Law in New York and is permanently based in Houston, Texas. Zyankovich frequently visits Belarus and actively takes part in the country’s political life.
On April 12, the day of Zyankovich’s detention in Moscow, a noted Belarusian political analyst, Alyaksandr Fyaduta, went incommunicado in the Russian capital, where he works as a media consultant.
Moscow police said at the time that they had started looking for him after his relatives raised concerns about his whereabouts.
On April 13, the Belarusian KGB said that Fyaduta is in custody in Minsk.
The KGB statement said that Fyaduta and BNF chairman Ryhor Kastusyou were being held on unspecified charges, adding that detailed information on the cases will be provided later.
Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, was declared the landslide winner in the August election, which was widely viewed as rigged in his favor.
Thousands of citizens took to the streets for months to protest the results, saying Lukashenka’s challenger, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, actually won the election.
Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus for Lithuania after the election for security reasons, while Lukashenka has directed a brutal postelection crackdown in which almost 30,000 have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and journalists targeted.
Many other senior opposition figures have also left or were forced to leave Belarus, fearing for their safety, while several of those who haven’t left have been detained by security officials.
MINSK — Police in Belarus have reportedly detained the chairman of opposition Belarusian Popular Front (BNF) party, Ryhor Kastusyou, amid an ongoing crackdown on dissent following a disputed presidential election that handed victory to strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
According to Kastusyou’s relatives, the politician was detained on unspecified charges in the eastern city of Shklou on April 12 and transported to Minsk.
There has been no official announcement by authorities on Kastusyou’s detainment so far.
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, was declared the winner in the August 2020 election, which was widely viewed as rigged in his favor.
Thousands of citizens have since taken to the streets to protest the results, saying Lukashenka’s challenger, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, actually won the election.
Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus for Lithuania after the election for security reasons, while Lukashenka has directed a brutal postelection crackdown in which almost 30,000 have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and journalists targeted in the action.
Many other senior opposition figures have also left, or were forced to leave Belarus, fearing for their safety, while several of those who haven’t left have been detained by security officials.
HOMEL, Belarus — Four associates of Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya have pleaded not guilty to charges of organizing protests against authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka as their trial started on April 12 in the southeastern city of Homel.
Tatsyana Kaneuskaya, Yury Ulasau, Dzmitry Ivashkou, and Alyaksandr Shabalin were members of Tsikhanouskaya’s campaign team and arrested just days before an August 9, 2020, presidential election for organizing gatherings and demonstrations demanding independent candidates be registered for the vote.
The four were also charged with the seizure of a building, while Ulasau was additionally charged with publicly insulting an official.
RFE/RL correspondents reported that dozens of people came to support the four activists at the courthouse on April 12, but only one person for each defendant’s family was allowed to enter the building due to what officials called “coronavirus precautions.”
Journalists were also not allowed into the courtroom.
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
Those relatives who were allowed to enter the building were forced to leave their telephones at a security desk before entering the courtroom.
Kaneuskaya’s son, Alyaksey Kaneuski, who was allowed to be present at the trial, told journalists later in the day that all four defendants pleaded not guilty.
Tens of thousands of Belarusians have taken to the streets, almost weekly, since the election when Lukashenka claimed reelection in a vote that Tsikhanouskaya and her supporters called fraudulent.
The demonstrators are demanding that Lukashenka leave and new elections be held, but Belarus’s strongman has been defiant. Security officials have arrested thousands and forced Tsikhanouskaya and other top opposition figures out of the country.
Several protesters have been killed in the violence and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used against some of those detained.
Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus for Lithuania after the election for security reasons and has been rallying international support for the pro-democracy movement.
More than 30,000 people have been detained in the protests, with hundreds beaten, several killed, and reports from rights groups that there is credible evidence of torture being used by security officials.
In response to the ongoing crackdown, the West has slapped sanctions on top officials and refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
MINSK — Belarusian authorities have stopped the European news network Euronews from broadcasting inside the country amid a campaign to muzzle independent media and journalists as part of the government’s crackdown on dissent following a disputed presidential election that returned strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka to power.
The Information Ministry said in a statement on April 12 that the right given to Euronews, a 24-hour television channel covering world news in 12 language editions, including Russian, to distribute its programs in Belarus had expired.
It added that Russia’s Pobeda (Victory) channel focusing on World War II had commenced broadcasting in Euronews’s place. In recent years, Russia has been promoting the victory of the Soviet Union and allies over Nazi Germany in 1945 in its state propaganda against the West.
A ministry spokeswoman was quoted by the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti as saying that Euronews’s license had not been renewed because the channel violated legislation by running advertisements in English, instead of Russian or Belarusian.
Euronews, which is headquartered in the French city of Lyon, did not immediately comment on the move.
Tens of thousands of Belarusians have taken the streets, almost weekly, since August 2020 when Lukashenka claimed reelection in a vote that opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya and her supporters called fraudulent.
The demonstrators are demanding that Lukashenka leave and new elections be held, but Belarus’s strongman has been defiant. Security officials have arrested thousands and forced Tsikhanouskaya and other top opposition figures out of the country.
Several protesters have been killed in the violence and some rights organizations say there is credible evidence of torture being used against some of those detained.
Meanwhile, Barys Haretski, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, says the government has embarked on the largest crackdown on journalists and rights activists Europe has ever seen.
“Since last summer, the authorities have systematically created, let us say, ‘a Great Wall of China’ around Belarusian society. They have repressed journalists and shut down media outlets,” Haretski said.
Lukashenka, who has run Belarus since 1994, and other top officials have been slapped with sanctions by the West, which refuses to recognize him as the legitimate leader of the country.
Minsk-based media expert Paulyuk Bykouski said the move to ban Euronews cuts off a main point of access to fair and unfiltered news for Belarusians, who “do not have access to such information projects as CNN, Fox News, and any other channels that could be a possible alternative to what is being broadcast by Belarusian state media and Russian television channels.”
Workers taking part in solidarity rallies. Minsk, 14 August 2020. Photo: АВ / Vot Tak TV / Belsat
Belsat.eu of 9 April 2021 reports thatthe 2021 Arthur Svensson International Prize for Trade Union Rights has been awarded to the independent trade union movement in Belarus, represented by the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP) and its affiliates. for ‘their fearless struggle for democracy and fundamental trade union rights in Europe’s last dictatorship’.
“Belarus is considered one of the worst countries in the world for violating workers’ rights. Human rights organizations have for many years expressed deep concern about the human rights violations in the country; «disappearances», police violence and lack of freedom of expression and association. Despite the Lukashenka regime’s attempts to take control of the independent unions and complicate recruitment, organizing and regular trade union activity, they have never given up and have continued to work for its members,” the awarding committee says.
According to them,the independent trade union movement became central early in the fight against the falsification of the election result and the fight for democracy when the situation in the country significantly deteriorated in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
MINSK — Belarusian lawmakers have approved several amendments to legislation that severely restricts civil rights and the free flow of information amid a crackdown on protests challenging the official results of a presidential election that handed authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka his sixth consecutive term.
The texts of the controversial amendments to the laws on extremism and mass media — which come amid an ongoing crackdown on opposition groups who have said a presidential election last August was rigged in favor of Lukashenka — were approved in the first reading on April 2 and placed on the official website for legal documents on April 9, marking the first time much of the information has been made public.
According to the amendments, any activities by individuals, political parties, or domestic or international organizations defined as damaging independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty, the basis of the constitutional order, and public safety will be considered “extremist.”
In the wake of the August vote, thousands of Belarusians have taken to the streets in what has become the largest and most persistent show of opposition to Lukashenka over the nearly three decades he has held power.
More than 33,000 people have been arrested for participating in the demonstrations. Many have been beaten by police, while some have said they were tortured while in custody.
The European Union, the United States, and other nations have refused to recognize the declared results of the election.
Several Western nations, as well as the European Union, have slapped sanctions on Lukashenka and other senior Belarusian officials and the new amendments are likely to spark an outcry for further sanctions.
If approved and signed into law, the amendments would ban individual lawyers and private firms from defending people in some criminal and administrative cases. Most of the lawyers who work with Belarusian journalist associations and have defended RFE/RL reporters in recent months have already been stripped of their licenses.
The amendments also state that along with the violent seizure of power, the creation of illegal armed groups, and terrorist activities, the following actions will be considered as extremist activities: the distribution of false information; insulting an official; discrediting the state and governing organs; impeding the activities of the Central Election Commission and other state organs; the active participation and organization of events of so-called mass disorder; and making calls to take part in unsanctioned public events or financially supporting such events.
One passage of the amendments states that any materials propagating unsanctioned public events that can be read, sung, or shown will be considered “extremist symbols.” That includes portraits of anyone who was legally found to be an “extremist.”
Amendments to the law on media will allow authorities to shut down media outlets after two written warnings regarding their activities during one year if the activities of such media outlets impose a “threat to the country’s national security.”
The amendments also mandate that state bodies can limit access to online publications if the Information Ministry finds that materials of such publications carry information banned for distribution, owners or editors of such online resources were warned at least twice during one year, or the refusal to follow requests by officials to fix violations of the law on media. It does not clearly specify whether the time period refers to a calendar year or one year from when the first warning is given.
Belarusian state media reported earlier this week that lawmakers also approved amendments to the Criminal Code and laws on public assembly, state security, and the Internet, the full texts of which have not been made public yet.
Another amendment would make it mandatory to obtain preliminary permission from local authorities before holding public events, instead of preliminary notification to the authorities. Also, it would be illegal for media and social-network users to publish information about the dates, sites, and times of such public events. Also, live coverage of unsanctioned events would be illegal, thus making journalists at such events as equally responsible for violating the regulations as the participants and organizers would be.
The amendments would also allow prosecutors to limit access to Internet publications that “distribute information that can damage the national interests of Belarus.”
Amendments to six existing laws dealing with extremism would give law enforcement officers the right to use firearms at their own discretion without waiting for a command from supervisors. Police would also be allowed to ban taking photos, recording events on video. They would also be allowed to collect personal data of social-network users without court decisions or prosecutors’ warrants.
Police would also be given the right to create lists of individuals they feel are inclined to participate in extremist activities. Once on such a list, a person would be banned from certain activities, including journalism, publishing, teaching, while their financial activities would be put under surveillance.
The amendments also allow the central bank to monitor cash withdrawals through foreign-issued debit cards and limit such withdrawals, as well as to freeze the bank accounts of “suspicious individuals.”
MINSK — Well-known human rights activist Tatsyana Hatsura-Yavorskaya, one of the founders of the Belarusian civil rights group Zvyano (Chain), is being held in a detention center on an unspecified charge.
Hatsura-Yavorskaya was detained on April 6 after police searched her home and office, saying that the searches were conducted as part of an investigation into “financing mass disorders.”
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
The activist’s husband, Uladzimer Yavorski, told RFE/RL late on April 8 that a court in Minsk earlier in the day had fined his wife for “disobedience to police,” but that they did not immediately release her afterward.
“[After the hearing] we waited for her near the detention center. But in the end, her lawyer told us that Tatsyana will remain in custody as she had a different status. She had been detained on a criminal charge. We do not know what exactly the charge is at this point,” Yavorski said.
A day before Hatsura-Yavorskaya’s detainment, two of her associates, Natallya Trenina and Yulia Syamenchanka, were also detained after their homes were searched.
Trenina and Syamenchanka helped Hatsura-Yavorskaya organize an exhibition in Minsk devoted to physicians assisting COVID-19 patients called The Gadget Is Breathing, But I Am Not.
Hatsura-Yavorskaya, a mother of four, is known for initiating several cultural events, including WATCH DOCS, an international festival of documentaries about human rights that has been held each year since 2015.
She and her associates were arrested amid an ongoing crackdown directed by authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka to quell demonstrations sparked by the official results of a presidential election last August that handed Lukashenka a sixth term in office.
Opposition figures say the election was rigged. Many countries and groups, including the United States and the European Union, have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the leader of Belarus. They have also imposed sanctions on him and several senior Belarusian officials over the crackdown.
The closely linked Russian and Belarusian currencies have weakened sharply amid an ongoing slew of seemingly unrelated political and diplomatic challenges for the two post-Soviet neighbors.
Russia’s ruble hit a five-month low against the U.S. dollar on April 7 despite hints at a possible monetary tightening by the Russian central bank that could have propped up the currency.
The Belarusian ruble weakened to a record of 2.66 to the dollar the same day, breaking a previous low from February and nearing levels from the weeks just after a disputed election in August 2020.
Both economies have been stymied by Western sanctions, blacklisting, and other punitive measures over their authoritarian leaders’ increasingly repressive tactics to quell dissent.
Russian President Vladimir Putin faces increasing international pressure over the poisoning and jailing of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, while Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who had ruled Belarus since 1994, has been condemned in the West for his brutal crackdown on peaceful protests since a dubious reelection claim in August.
Experts also cite fears of escalating conflict near Ukraine’s border with Russia, where Moscow has acknowledged a troop buildup as skirmishes intensify in Ukraine six years into a conflict between Russian-backed separatists and forces loyal to Kyiv.
NATO and Western leaders have stepped up contacts with Ukraine’s leadership and warned Russia against “provocations.”
Currency traders think a Russian interest rate hike is coming but the Russian ruble remains stubbornly low “due to fears over military escalations in Donbas,” Credit Suisse analysts wrote in a note this week, referring to the eastern region of the former Soviet republic.
Pandemic Problems
In addition to international sanctions over Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, Russia’s economy has also been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and low oil prices.
Analysts have suggested Russia’s recovery after the pandemic will lag behind those of many other emerging markets amid what they called lingering signs of “fundamental weakness.”
In Belarus, tens of thousands of people have been detained in the protests since a presidential election that the opposition and the West say was rigged.
Most of the opposition leadership has been arrested or forced into exile, including opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who has been rallying international support for the pro-democracy movement since fleeing to Lithuania.
The West has responded with sanctions on top officials and rejects Lukashenka as Belarus’s legitimate leader.
The Belarusian economy was already in a weak position before the political crisis, while the coronavirus pandemic has created additional problems.
Andrei Karpunin, chairman of Belarus’s Club of Financial Directors, cited a decrease in remittances from Belarusians working abroad as a major factor in that currency’s fall.
But he also predicted that if sanctions continue to dog the economy, Belarusians will have little choice but to withdraw ruble deposits to convert them into hard currency, further hurting the exchange rate.
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service, AFP, Reuters, and AP
MINSK — The criminal case of Belarusian opposition member Paval Sevyarynets, who has been in custody in Minsk since June on a charge of taking part in mass protests in the country’s capital, has been moved to a court in the eastern city of Mahilyou.
The politician’s wife, Volha Sevyarynets, told RFE/RL on April 7 that her husband is expected to be transferred from a detention center in Minsk to Mahilyou for the trial. The date of the trial remains unknown.
No reason for the move was given but many believe that the authorities took this decision to try to lower the profile of the proceedings by making it harder for journalists and the international community to follow. Mahilyou is almost 200 kilometers (120 miles) east of Minsk.
Sevyarynets, a co-chairman of the non-registered opposition Belarusian Christian Democratic Party, is one of dozens of activists and politicians who were detained in Minsk and several other cities across Belarus during rallies in June last year. At these events, hundreds of demonstrators were collecting signatures necessary to register candidates other than the authoritarian incumbent, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, for an August 9 presidential election.
Sevyarynets’ detention has been prolonged several times since his initial arrest.
If convicted, he faces up to eight years in prison.
Relatives and colleagues of several other jailed opposition activists — including Yauhen Afnahel, Andrey Voynich, Paval Yukhnevich, Maksim Vinyarski, Iryna Shchasnaya, and Dzmitry Kazlou — said earlier that they will be tried along with Sevyarynets in Mahilyou.
Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, was declared the winner in the election, which was widely viewed as rigged in his favor.
Thousands of citizens took to the streets to protest the results, saying Lukashenka’s challenger, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, actually won the vote.
Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus for Lithuania after the election for security reasons, while Lukashenka has directed a brutal postelection crackdown in which almost 30,000 people have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and journalists targeted.
Lukashenka, who has run Belarus since 1994, and other top officials have been slapped with sanctions by the West, which refuses to recognize him as the legitimate leader of the country.
Amnesty International says some measures to tackle the coronavirus pandemic have aggravated existing patterns of abuses and inequalities in Europe and Central Asia, where a number of governments used the crisis “as a smokescreen for power grabs, clampdowns on freedoms, and a pretext to ignore human rights obligations.”
Government responses to COVID-19 “exposed the human cost of social exclusion, inequality, and state overreach,” the London-based watchdog said in its annual report released on April 7.
According to the report, The State of the World’s Human Rights, close to half of all countries in the region have imposed states of emergency related to COVID-19, with governments restricting rights such as freedom of movement, expression, and peaceful assembly.
The enforcement of lockdowns and other public health measures “disproportionately” hit marginalized individuals and groups who were targeted with violence, identity checks, quarantines, and fines.
Roma and people on the move, including refugees and asylum seekers, were placed under discriminatory “forced quarantines” in Bulgaria, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Serbia, and Slovakia.
Law enforcement officials unlawfully used force along with other violations in Belgium, France, Georgia, Greece, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, Romania, and Spain.
In Azerbaijan, arrests on politically motivated charges intensified “under the pretext” of containing the pandemic.
In countries where freedoms were already severely circumscribed, last year saw further restrictions.
Russian authorities “moved beyond organizations, stigmatizing individuals also as ‘foreign agents’ and clamped down further on single person pickets.”
Meanwhile, authorities in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan adopted or proposed new restrictive laws on assembly.
Belarusian police responded to mass protests triggered by allegations of election fraud with “massive and unprecedented violence, torture and other ill-treatment.”
“Independent voices were brutally suppressed as arbitrary arrests, politically motivated prosecutions and other reprisals escalated against opposition candidates and their supporters, political and civil society activists and independent media,” the report said.
Across the region, governments in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan “misused existing and new legislation to curtail freedom of expression.”
Governments also took insufficient measures to protect journalists and whistle-blowers, including health workers, and sometimes targeted those who criticized government responses to the pandemic. This was the case in Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
In Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, medical workers “did not dare speak out against already egregious freedom of expression restrictions.”
Erosion Of Judicial Independence
Amnesty International said that governments in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere continued to take steps in 2020 that eroded the independence of the judiciary. This included disciplining judges or interfering with their appointment for demonstrating independence, criticizing the authorities, or passing judgments that went against the wishes of the government.
In Russia and in “much” of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, violations of the right to a fair trial remained “widespread” and the authorities cited the pandemic to deny detainees meetings with lawyers and prohibit public observation of trials.
In Belarus, “all semblance of adherence to the right to a fair trial and accountability was eroded.”
“Not only were killings and torture of peaceful protesters not investigated, but authorities made every effort to halt or obstruct attempts by victims of violations to file complaints against perpetrators,” the report said.
Human Rights In Conflict Zones
According to Amnesty International, conflicts in countries that made up the former Soviet Union continued to “hold back” human development and regional cooperation.
In Georgia, Russia and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia continued to restrict freedom of movement with the rest of the county, including through the further installation of physical barriers.
The de facto authorities in Moldova’s breakaway Transdniester region introduced restrictions on travel from government-controlled territory, which affected medical provisions to the local population.
And in eastern Ukraine, both Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists also imposed restrictions on travel across the contact line, with scores of people suffering lack of access to health care, pensions, and workplaces.
Last fall’s armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan resulted in more than 5,000 deaths and saw all sides using cluster munitions banned under international humanitarian law, as well as heavy explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated civilian areas.
Both Azerbaijani and Armenian forces also “committed war crimes including extrajudicial execution, torture of captives and desecration of corpses of opposing forces.”
Shrinking of Human Rights Defenders’ Space
Amnesty International’s report said some governments in Europe and Central Asia further limited the space for human rights defenders and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through “restrictive laws and policies, and stigmatizing rhetoric.”
This “thinned the ranks of civil society through financial attrition, as funding streams from individuals, foundations, businesses and governments dried up as a consequence of COVID-19-related economic hardship.”
The Kazakh and Russian governments continued moves to silence NGOs through smear campaigns.
Authorities in Kazakhstan threatened over a dozen human rights NGOs with suspension based on alleged reporting violations around foreign income.
Peaceful protesters, human rights defenders, and civic and political activists in Russia faced arrests and prosecution.
In Kyrgyzstan, proposed amendments to NGO legislation created “onerous” financial reporting requirements, while “restrictive new NGO legislation was mooted” in Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, and Serbia.
The U.S. State Department will recommend against the renewal of a general license authorizing transactions with nine state-owned Belarusian companies, spokesman Ned Price said on March 31.
Speaking at a briefing, Price said that the human rights situation in Belarus has deteriorated “to what is arguably the worst point in Belarus’s independent history.”
The U.S. Department of Treasury first issued the licenses to the nine state-owned companies in 2015. They include fertilizer giant Grodno Azot and oil refiner Naftan.
The licenses have since been extended annually because of progress at the time on human rights and the release of political prisoners, he said.
The Treasury Department issues general licenses in order to authorize activities that would otherwise be prohibited with regard to Belarus.
But with more than 300 political prisoners currently in detention, the State Department “is unable to recommend another extension at this time,” Price said.
The State Department put forth its recommendation to the Treasury Department, which will decide whether the licenses are renewed.
“This is in fact something that we hope does not come to pass,” Price said.
The licenses will expire on April 26, but Price said the State Department’s recommendation is “reversible” if Belarus releases “all those wrongfully imprisoned simply for peacefully disagreeing with the authorities, espousing different views, or daring to compete in an election.”
Price also called on Belarusian authorities to end violence against its people and to begin a meaningful dialogue with the political opposition that leads to free and fair elections.
The United States wants to see Belarus succeed as an independent, prosperous, and democratic country, Price said.
“The events surrounding the fraudulent 2020 election, the violence, and repressive tactics in its aftermath cannot be ignored,” he said.
Belarus has been rocked by protests since a presidential election in August that authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed extended his rule for a sixth term despite the opposition and West saying the vote was rigged.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have discussed possible cooperation on vaccines with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the French Presidency said on March 30.
In August, Russia approved the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, prompting scientists around the world to question its safety and efficacy because it was registered before the results of Phase 3 studies were made available.
However, peer-reviewed, late-stage trial results published in The Lancet medical journal last month showed the two-dose regimen of Sputnik V was 91.6 percent effective against symptomatic COVID-19, about the same level as the leading Western-developed vaccines.
Macron and Merkel also urged Putin during their video call to respect the rights of imprisoned political opponent Aleksei Navalny and to preserve his health, the Elysee Palace said in a statement.
Hundreds of Russian physicians signed an online petition demanding that authorities provide immediate medical assistance to Navalny amid growing concerns over the state of his health.
Navalny’s health condition became an issue last week after his allies said they were concerned over his deteriorating health and called on prison authorities to clarify his condition.
Navalny said he was suffering from severe back pain and that “nothing” was being done by prison authorities to solve the problem other than being given some ibuprofen.
The three leaders also discussed the situation in Ukraine, Belarus, Libya, and Syria and agreed to coordinate efforts so that Iran returns to full compliance with its international obligations, the statement said.
The Kremlin confirmed in a statement that “prospects for the registration of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine in the European Union and its possible supplies and joint production in EU countries” were discussed, as well as the situation in Syria.
The Kremlin statement also said that Putin had explained the situation around Navalny’s case.
“In relation to the issue of A. Navalny raised by partners, appropriate explanations of objective circumstances of the case were given,” the Kremlin noted.
A U.S. report on human rights around the world highlights a deteriorating picture in many countries, including Belarus, where the report outlines the use of “brute force” against peaceful pro-democracy protesters, and Russia, where opposition politician Aleksei Navalny was targeted.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a briefing on March 30 that in those countries and others “trend lines on human rights continue to move in the wrong direction.”
Blinken spoke as the human rights report outlining the situation last year in nearly 200 countries worldwide was released. The State Department is required to write the report annually and send it to Congress.
“Too many people continued to suffer under brutal conditions in 2020,” Blinken said in an introduction to the report. He said some governments had used the coronavirus pandemic as a “pretext to restrict rights and consolidate authoritarian rule.”
The report on Russiahighlighted the nerve-agent poisoning of Navalny, who was imprisoned earlier this year upon returning to Russia from months of treatment in Germany. The report said “credible reports” indicated officers from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) poisoned Navalny last August.
It also mentions “credible” reports by nongovernmental organizations and independent media outlets of a campaign of violence, including torture and extrajudicial killings, against LGBT people in Russia’s Chechnya region, and reports that the government or its proxies committed or attempted to commit extrajudicial killings of its opponents in other countries.
The report defined Belarus as “an authoritarian state” and catalogued a long list of “significant human rights issues,” including arbitrary killings by security forces, torture in detention facilities, arbitrary arrests, serious problems with the independence of the judiciary, and restrictions on free expression and the press.
“Authorities at all levels generally operated with impunity and always failed to take steps to prosecute or punish officials in the government or security forces who committed human rights abuses,” the report on Belarus said.
The report is especially critical of China, using assertive language to describe the Chinese government’s treatment of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang province as “genocide and crimes against humanity.”
The report described a litany of crimes committed by the state against those groups in Xinjiang, including arbitrary imprisonment, forced sterilizations and other coerced birth control measures, torture, forced labor, and “draconian” restrictions on basic freedoms.
It said in addition to the estimated 1 million Uyghurs and other minority groups in extrajudicial internment camps, there were an additional 2 million subjected to daytime-only “’reeducation’ training.”
Blinken also said that the State Department plans to bring back topics of reproductive health in the country reports. An addendum will be released later this year that will cover the issues, including information about maternal mortality and discrimination against women in accessing sexual and reproductive health.
The topics were removed from the report by the Trump administration.
Belarusian prosecutors opened a terrorism investigation against opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the latest move from authorities trying to quash opposition groups after months of anti-government protests.
Tsikhanouskaya, who fled Belarus in the aftermath of last August’s disputed presidential election, had no immediate reaction to the move, which was announced on March 29 by Prosecutor-General Andrey Shved.
In a statement, Shved alleged that Tsikhanouskaya and several other people plotted to plant explosives and arson attacks in Minsk and other cities several days ago.
There were no other details in the statement, although its announcement came days after officials said they arrested a person accused of attempting to stage explosions in Minsk and the nearby city of Barysau.
Belarus has been engulfed by protests ever since the August 9 vote, when Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed a sixth term as president.
Opposition groups and some poll workers have said the election was rigged; the European Union, the United States, and other nations have refused to recognize the declared results.
In the wake of the vote, thousands of Belarusians took to the streets, in what became the largest and most persistent show of opposition in Lukashenka’s nearly three decades in power.
More than 33,000 people were arrested over weeks of demonstrations. Many of them were beaten by police and some have alleged being tortured while in custody.
In response to the repression, the West has slapped sanctions on top officials.
Last week, Tsikhanouskaya called for a new wave of anti-Lukashenka rallies. Police flooded Minsk and cracked down on opposition supporters who tried to launch rallies last week, arresting hundreds.
UN Photo/Jean-Marc FerréA general view of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council in session. 24 March 2021
The UN’s top rights forum passed resolutions condemning abuses of fundamental freedoms in Belarus and Myanmar on Wednesday, in response to ongoing concerns over the human rights situation in both countries.
The ISHR and another 15 organisations (see below) produced as usual their reflections on the key outcomes of the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council, as well as the missed opportunities to address key issues and situations including pushbacks and other human rights violations faced by migrants and refugees, and the human rights situations in Algeria, Cameroon, China, India, Kashmir and the Philippines.
They welcome some important procedural advances such as the possibility for NGOs to make video statements, which should be maintained and expanded after the pandemic for all discussions, including in general debates. …They are concerned by the renewal for another year of the ‘efficiency’ measures piloted in 2020, despite their negative impact on civil society participation in a year also impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge States to reinstate general debates in the June sessions, to preserve their open-ended nature, and maintain the option of video intervention also in general debates.
Environmental justice:
They welcome the joint statement calling for the recognition of the right of all to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment that was delivered by the Maldives, on behalf of Costa Rica, Morocco, Slovenia and Switzerland and supported by 55 States. We call on all States to seize this historic opportunity to support the core-group as they continue to work towards UN recognition so that everyone in the world, wherever they live, and without discrimination, has the right to live in a safe, clean and sustainable environment.
We welcome the joint statement that was delivered by Bangladesh, on behalf of 55 States, calling the Council to create a new Special Rapporteur on human rights and climate change. We believe this new mandate would be essential to supporting a stronger human rights-based approach to climate change, engaging in country visits, normative work and capacity-building, and further addressing the human rights impacts of climate responses, in order to support the most vulnerable. This mandate should be established without further delay.
Racial Justice: Over 150 States jointly welcomed that the implementation of HRC Resolution43/1 will center victims and their families. They urge the Council to respond to the High Commissioner’s call to address root causes of racism including the “legacies of enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, and its context of colonialism”. The Council must answer to the demands of victims’ families and civil society’s, and establish – at its next session – an independent inquiry to investigate systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States and a thematic commission of inquiry to investigate systemic racism in law enforcement globally, especially where it is related to legacies of colonialism and transatlantic slavery.
Right to health: The resolution on ensuring equitable, affordable, timely, and universal access by all countries to vaccines in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is a welcome move in highlighting the need for States not to have export and other restrictions on access to safe diagnostics, therapeutics, medicines, and vaccines, and essential health technologies, and their components, as well as equipment and encouraged States to use all flexibilities within TRIPs. However, a revised version of the resolution tabled was further weakened by the deletion of one paragraph on stockpiling of vaccines and the reference to ‘unequal allocation and distribution among countries”. The specific deletion highlights the collusion between rich States and big pharmaceuticals, their investment in furthering monopolistic intellectual property regimes resulting in grave human rights violations. The reluctance of States, predominantly WEOG States who continue to defend intellectual property regimes and States’ refusal to hold business enterprises accountable to human rights standards is very concerning during this Global crisis.
Attempts to undermine HRC mandate: They regret that once again this Council has adopted a resolution, purportedly advancing ‘mutual beneficial cooperation’ which seeks to undermine and reinterpret both the principle of universality and its mandate. Technical assistance, dialogue and cooperation must be pursued with the goal of promoting and protecting human rights, not as an end in itself or as a means of facilitating inter-State relations. We reiterate our call on all States, and especially Council members, to consider country situations in an independent manner, based on objective human rights criteria supported by credible UN and civil society information. This is an essential part of the Council’s work; reliance on cooperation alone hobbles the Council’s ability to act to support the defenders and communities that look to it for justice.
Country-specific resolutions: They welcome the new mandate for the High Commissioner focused on the human rights situation in Belarus in the context of the 2020 Presidential election. It is now essential for States to support the High Commissioner’s office, ensuring the resources and expertise are made available so that the mandate can be operationalised as quickly as possible. Immediately afterwards, on 24 March, 2021 the Human Rights House Foundation published a call by 64 Belarusian and international human rights organisations, welcoming the resolution passed by the UN Human Rights Council mandating the High Commissioner to create a new robust monitoring and reporting mandate focused on accountability for human rights violations in Belarus that have taken place since 1 May 2020. In so doing, the Council demonstrated its determination to hold Belarusian authorities to account. This mandate needs immediate action. We urge the international community to support this critical next step. The mandate should provide a complementary and expert international mechanism to regional accountability processes already under way. Furthermore, it should assist in the identification of those responsible for the most serious violations for future prosecution. [https://humanrightshouse.org/statements/civil-society-organisations-call-for-the-immediate-operationalisation-of-hrcs-new-mandate-on-belarus/]
They welcome the renewal of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Iran, and urge Council to consider further action to hold Iranian authorities accountable, in view of the systematic impunity and lack of transparency surrounding violations of human rights in the country.
They welcome the call for additional resources for the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, increased reporting by OHCHR as well as the work of the IIMM. Lack of international monitoring on, the imposition of martial law in Myanmar to prosecute civilians, including protesters, before military courts, the dangerous escalation of violence by the Tatmadaw and the widespread human rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity demand more efforts to ensure accountability.
They welcome the renewal and strengthening of the OHCHR’s monitoring and reporting mandate on Nicaragua, in a context of steady human rights deterioration marked by the Government’s refusal to cooperate constructively with the Office, over two years after its expulsion from the country. The adopted resolution lays out steps that Nicaragua should take to resume good faith cooperation and improve the situation ahead of this year’s national elections. It is also vital that this Council and its members continue to closely follow the situation in Nicaragua, and live up to the resolution’s commitments, by considering all available measures should the situation deteriorate by next year.
They welcome the increased monitoring and reporting on the situation of human rights in Sri Lanka. However, in light of the High Commissioner’s report on the rapidly deteriorating human rights situation and Sri Lanka’s incapacity and unwillingness to pursue accountability for crimes under international law, the Council should have urged States to seek other avenues to advance accountability, including through extraterritorial or universal jurisdiction.
While they welcome the extension of the mandate of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan (CHRSS), they regret the adoption of a competing resolution under the inadequate agenda item 10. This resolution sends a wrong signal as myriads of local-level conflicts and ongoing SGBV and other violations of fundamental rights continue to threaten the country’s stability. We urge South Sudan to continue cooperating with the CHRSS and to demonstrate concrete progress on key benchmarks and indicators.
They welcome the report by the Commission of Inquiry on Syria on arbitrary imprisonment and detention and reiterate the recommendation to establish an independent mechanism “to locate the missing or their remains”, and call on States to ensure the meaningful participation of victims and adopt a victim-centered approach, including by taking into consideration the Truth and Justice Charter of Syrian associations of survivors and families of disappeared when addressing arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance.
Country-specific State statements: They welcome States’ leadership and statements on human rights situations that merit the HRC’s attention.
They welcome the joint statement on the situation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and urge all actors, including the Ethiopian Federal Government, to protect civilians and ensure unhindered humanitarian access. Those responsible for crimes under international law, including Ethiopian soldiers, members of armed militias and non-State groups, and Eritrean soldiers involved in Tigray, must be held criminally accountable. The HRC should mandate an independent investigation and reporting by the High Commissioner.
For the first time in seven years, States at the HRC have united to condemn the widespread human rights violations by Egypt and its misuse of counter-terrorism measures to imprison human rights defenders, LGBTI persons, journalists, politicians and lawyers and peaceful critics. They welcome the cross-regional joint statement by 32 States and we reiterate our call supported by over 100 NGOs from across the world on the HRC to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the situation.
They welcome the joint statement by 45 States focused on the human rights situation in Russia, including the imprisonment of Alexi Navalny and the large number of arbitrary arrests of protestors across Russia. The statement rightly expresses concern for shrinking civil society space in Russia through recent legislative amendments and Russia using its “tools of State” to attack independent media and civil society.
The next session will receive a report on pushbacks from the Special Rapporteur on human rights of migrants. The Council must respond to the severity and scale of pushbacks and other human rights violations faced by migrants and refugees in transit and at borders and the ongoing suppression of solidarity, including by answering the High Commissioner’s call for independent monitoring. The Council’s silence feeds impunity, it must build on the momentum of the joint statement of over 90 States reaffirming their commitment to protection of the human rights of all migrants regardless of status.
While the OHCHR expressed deep concern about the deteriorating human rights situation and the ongoing crackdown on civil society in Algeria, and called for the immediate and unconditional release of arbitrarily detained individuals, the Council has remained largely silent. As authorities are increasingly arbitrarily and violently arresting protesters – at least 1,500 since the resumption of the Hirak pro-democracy movement on 13 February, they call on the Council to address the criminalisation of public freedoms, to protect peaceful protesters, activists and the media.
Cameroon is one of the human rights crises the Council has failed to address for too long. They condemn the acts of intimidation and reprisal exercised by the Cameroonian government in response to NGOs raising concerns, including DefendDefenders. This is unacceptable behavior by a Council member. The Council should consider collective action to address the gross human rights violations and abuses occurring in the country.
They echo the calls of many governments for the Council to step up its meaningful action to ensure that concerns raised by civil society, the UN Special Procedures and the OHCHR about the human rights situation in China be properly addressed, including through an independent international investigation. We also regret that a number of States have taken an unprincipled approach of voicing support to actions, such as those by the Chinese government, including in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, through their national and other joint statements.
They call for the Council’s attention on the rapid deterioration of human rights in India. Violent crackdowns on recent farmers’ protests, internet shutdowns in protest areas, sedition and criminal charges against journalists reporting on these protests, and criminalisation of human rights defenders signal an ongoing dangerous trend in restrictions of fundamental freedoms in India. We call on India to ensure fundamental freedoms and allow journalists, HRDs and civil society to continue their legitimate work without intimidation and fear of reprisals. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/10/29/also-un-calls-on-india-to-protect-human-rights-defenders/]
We once again regret the lack of Council’s attention on the human rights crisis in Kashmir. Fundamental freedoms in the Indian-administered Kashmir remains severely curtailed since the revocation of the constitutional autonomy in August 2019. Raids in October and November 2020 on residences and offices of human rights defenders and civil society organisations by India’s anti-terrorism authorities in a clear attempt at intimidation have further exacerbated the ongoing crisis. We call on the OHCHR to continue to monitor and regularly report to the Council on the situation in both Indian and Pakistani administered Kashmir, and on Indian and Pakistani authorities to give the OHCHR and independent observers unfettered access to the region. [See also; https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/02/09/forgotten-kashmir-something-has-to-be-done/]
Nearly six months since its adoption, the Council Resolution 45/33 on technical assistance to the Philippines has proven utterly insufficient to address the widespread human rights violations and persistent impunity. Killings in the war on drugs continue, and attacks on human rights defenders and activists have escalated. The killing of nine unarmed activists on 7 March 2021 clearly demonstrates that no amount of technical assistance will end the killings as long as the President and senior officials continue to incite violence and killings as official State policy. It is imperative that the Council sets up an international accountability mechanism to end the cycle of violence and impunity in the Philippines. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/09/philippines-killings-continue-and-de-lima-stays-in-jail/]
Watch the statement:
*The statement was also endorsed by: Franciscans International; Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR); International Commission of Jurists (ICJ); International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR); Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA); African Centre For Democracy And Human Rights Studies; International Federation for Human Rights Leagues (FIDH); MENA Rights Group; International Lesbian and Gay Association; Impact Iran; Ensemble contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM); Siamak Pourzand Foundation; Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS); ARTICLE 19; CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation.
NOTE: The 47th regular session of the Human Rights Council is scheduled from 21 June 2021 to 9 July 2021.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says Belarusian authorities have “escalated” repression against independent media over the past five months, arbitrarily detaining and beating journalists, imposing fines and prison sentences on politically motivated charges, revoking their media credentials, and raiding their homes and offices.
The crackdown “is part of the government’s efforts to silence media reporting on human rights violations and peaceful, countrywide protests” that have rocked the country in the wake of an August election, the New York-based human rights watchdog said in a report published on March 29.
The Belarusian opposition and the West say the vote that authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed extended his iron-fisted rule for a sixth term was rigged, and are demanding fair elections and justice for abuses since the vote.
Since protests erupted, more than 30,000 people have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and there have been widespread reports of torture, while most the opposition leadership has been arrested or forced into exile.
“Instead of ensuring justice for sweeping police brutality and other abuses, Belarusian authorities are prosecuting journalists reporting on sensitive issues,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at HRW.
“The authorities should guarantee that all journalists in Belarus are able to carry out their work without fear of reprisals and without abusive restrictions,” Williamson added.
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
Between September and March, the authorities opened at least 18 criminal cases against journalists, “apparently in reprisal for their work,” HRW said.
Three of them were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six months to two years, while seven others are awaiting trial behind bars on criminal charges of violating public order, tax evasion, and interfering with police work. One journalist accused of insulting the president is under house arrest.
The authorities “coerced lawyers representing many of these journalists into signing vaguely worded nondisclosure agreements, barring them from sharing any information about their clients’ cases,” HRW said, adding that several lawyers who refused to sign have faced disbarment.
In some criminal cases involving “bogus” charges, the authorities have designated journalists as witnesses and subjected them to “police and judicial harassment,” according to the watchdog.
“The journalists reported being summoned for police questioning, threatened with criminal charges, and subjected to home and office searches and seizure of their equipment,” HRW said, adding that at least one newspaper “had to temporarily close due to a threat of criminal prosecution, raids, and confiscated equipment.”
Belarusian authorities “wrongly equate reporting on unauthorized demonstrations with participation in them, particularly if the reporter works for an outlet that the authorities refuse to grant accreditation,” HRW said.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists said that about 400 journalists had been detained on administrative charges since August.
At least 100 of them were given short administrative jail terms since December, while others were fined on administrative charges of “violating the rules on mass gatherings,” “disobeying the police,” and “violating the laws on mass media.”
HRW quoted several journalists as saying they were brutally beaten during their detention, denied medical assistance, and held in poor conditions. Some had their equipment destroyed.
It said the authorities deported at least two journalists with Russian citizenship in recent months, apparently in retaliation for their work in Belarus, and at least three journalists who were threatened with having custody of their children taken away fled the country with their families.
At least one media outlet was “unjustly” stripped of its media credentials for violating the media law, and state-owned printing houses refused to print at least five independent newspapers according to HRW.
In October, the Belarusian Foreign Ministry adopted new rules on foreign media accreditation in the country, “canceling all existing accreditations and making the accreditation process significantly more complicated,” it said.
Police in Belarus detained dozens of people in Minsk and cordoned off streets ahead of fresh protests on March 27, as the opposition vowed to breathe new life into the pro-democracy movement after braving months of repression.
Belarus was rocked by massive protests in the wake of an August election that authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed extended his iron-fisted rule for a sixth term, despite the opposition and the West saying the vote was rigged.
Hundreds of thousands initially took to the streets to protest the election, but harsh winter weather and a brutal crackdown slowed the protest movement’s momentum in recent months.
The opposition Telegram channel Nexta, which helps mobilize and coordinate protests, told its 1.4 million followers that the events on March 27 would be the “first mass exit” of Belarusians this year.
“We’re back to the streets,” Nexta wrote, signaling that the opposition is prepared for a new wave of protests in the form of scattered rallies across the country. “We have prepared a new scenario. This tactic is designed to exhaust and disorient the security forces. It is also important for us to protect people.”
The Viasna human rights center reported that by 6 p.m., police had detained at least 75 people, including five journalists.
Protest organizers had planned for protests in the city center, but due to a heavy security presence and cordoned off streets they called for supporters to gather in courtyards and adjacent streets near Yakub Kolas Square.
Photos and video from central Minsk showed military vehicles, police vans, and blocked off streets, with security forces reportedly randomly detaining people and throwing them into minivans. Pro-government protesters waving flags from cars were also observed.
The Interior Ministry said that, across the country, “not a single unauthorized mass event was recorded.”
“Small groups with unregistered symbols were seen in Minsk. Some protesters were taken in for investigation,” the Interior Ministry said.
Viasna reported that police were carrying out “spot detentions” and looking at people’s phones in central parts of the city and in side streets near to where protesters were to gather.
Among those detained were two editors of the independent Tut.by news website, Galina Ulasik and her colleague Anna Kaltygina.
Another outlet, Nasha Niva, with 90,000 Telegram followers, said its editor in chief, Yahor Martsinovich, a photographer, and a reporter were detained.
The relatively muted protests came days after scattered demonstrations in Minsk on March 25 to mark Freedom Day, commemorating the founding of a short-lived democratic Belarusian republic more than 100 years ago. Viasna reported police detained at least 176 people on that day.
Since protests erupted last summer, more than 30,000 people have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and there have been widespread reports of torture.
In response to the repression, the West has slapped sanctions on top officials and refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
A group of lawmakers in the U.S. Congress has condemned the “unjust and illegitimate detainment” of Ihar Losik, a popular blogger and RFE/RL consultant jailed in Belarus, calling for his immediate release in the latest show of support from the highest echelons of government.
In a letter addressed to Losik on March 26, a bipartisan group of lawmakers said they stand “shoulder to shoulder” with him, his family, and all other Belarusians struggling in the country’s pro-democracy movement amid a violent government crackdown following a presidential election last August that authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed to win and which the opposition says was rigged.
“We join the international community in strongly condemning your unjust and illegitimate detainment by the Belarusian authorities,” the seven lawmakers said in the letter. “We stand ready to hold those complicit in your illegitimate detention to account through targeted sanctions working with our friends and allies in the European Union.”
The letter was signed by Representatives Marcy Kaptur (Democrat-Ohio), Bill Keating (Democrat-Massachusetts), David Cicilline (Democrat-Rhode Island), Tom Malinowski (Democrat-New Jersey), James McGovern (Democrat-Massachusetts), Brian Fitzpatrick (Republican-Pennsylvania), and Chris Smith (Republican-New Jersey).
Lukashenka, who has ruled the country since 1994, has directed a brutal postelection crackdown in which almost 30,000 people have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and the media targeted.
Losik is among nearly 300 political prisoners caught up in the crackdown.
In response to the suppression of protesters, the West has slapped sanctions on top officials and refuses to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader of the former Soviet republic.
The 28-year-old Losik has been in pretrial detention since June 2020 on charges widely considered trumped up.
He was initially charged with allegedly using his popular Telegram channel to “prepare to disrupt public order” ahead of a presidential election last August.
Earlier this month, he tried to slit his wrists and launched a four-day hunger strike after being informed of new, unspecified charges. He had previously launched a six-week hunger strike to protest the original charges.
On March 22, 11 days after he was informed of the new charges, a court extended Losik’s pretrial detention to May 25.
RFE/RL President Jamie Fly condemned the move and the new charges, saying the father of a 2-year-old daughter should be released immediately so he can be reunited with his family.
“Journalism is not a crime and Ihar has been unjustly detained for far too long. Ihar and his family should not be tortured in this way,” Fly wrote, adding that RFE/RL was “deeply distressed” by the new charges and Losik’s deteriorating health situation.
The oversight agency for RFE/RL and other U.S. international broadcasters has also condemned the Belarusian authorities’ decision to heap further charges on Losik and has demanded his release.
The U.S. State Department and other members of Congress have previously condemned the wrongful detention of Losik and other political prisoners.
Belarus has been excluded from the Eurovision Song Contest after failing to submit an entry that complies with the nonpolitical nature of the competition, the contest’s organizer said on March 26.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said in a statement on that a second entry submitted by the Belarus state broadcasting authority “was in breach of the rules that ensure the Contest is not instrumentalized or brought into disrepute.”
The first song submitted by the band Galasy ZMesta was rejected earlier this month. That entry, titled I’ll Teach You, had lyrics such as “I’ll teach you how to dance to the tune.”
There had been complaints that the lyrics mocked the mass protest movement against Belarusian authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
The EBU extended the deadline to give Belarus’s national broadcaster, BTRC, a chance to submit another entry.
The EBU’s statement on March 26 said BTRC had now missed the deadline to submit an eligible entry, and “regrettably, Belarus will not be participating in the 65th Eurovision Song Contest in May.”
It did not provide details about the second entry but said that the EBU and the Eurovision Song Contest’s governing board had “carefully scrutinized the new entry submitted by BTRC to assess its eligibility to compete.”
Galasy ZMesta band leader Dmitry Butakov told Belarusian state television in an interview broadcast on March 21 that the band had prepared two new songs for the contest, including one about bunnies.
The band’s repertoire includes songs that ridicule the European Union and distort the Belarusian language. Members of the band are known for their participation in pro-government rallies, RFE/RL’s Belarus Service reported, and on their website state: “We cannot remain indifferent” when “under the guise of” political struggle “they try to destroy the country we love and live in.”
It is not the first time that politics has mixed in to affect performers or their songs.
After Russia and Georgia fought a brief war in 2009, the Georgian band Stephane & 3G was to compete with the song We Don’t Wanna Put In. The EBU objected to the lyrics and gave the band a chance to replace them, but both the band and the Georgian broadcaster GPB refused to participate in the contest.
Armenia’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest in 2015 had to change its title after it was seen as referring to the World War I-era mass killings of ethnic Armenians by Ottoman Turkey.
In 2017, when the contest was held in Kyiv, controversy swirled around Russia’s contestant, Yulia Samoilova, who was barred from entering Ukraine because she had performed in the Russia-annexed Ukrainian region of Crimea in 2015. Russia, in response, decided not to allow her to participate by video or to send another contestant.
The Eurovision Song Contest is to take place May 18-22 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
As pro-democracy supporters marched down the streets of Minsk on March 25, a reporter did a video interview with Nina Bahinskaya, a frail yet fiery veteran of protests in Belarus for decades.
As Bahinskaya speaks while she walks, a chilling scene plays out a few meters behind her. A woman — later identified as film student Maria Tsikhanava — is quickly approached by what appears to be a black-clad, balaclava-wearing Belarusian security officer, who grabs her and whisks her away, all in a few seconds and all unbeknownst to Bahinskaya, who marches on.
Belarusian leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya had hoped the rally on March 25 — or Freedom Day, as it is also the day commemorating the founding of a short-lived democratic Belarusian republic more than 100 years ago — would breathe new life into the country’s protest movement demanding Alyaksandr Lukashenka, in power since 1994, step down.
The country has been rocked by protests since Lukashenka claimed a landslide victory and a sixth straight term in an August presidential election that many Belarusians believe was rigged in his favor. Supporters of Tsikhanouskaya, a political novice who was buoyed by big crowds at campaign rallies, was the actual winner. She is now in exile in neighboring Lithuania.
Tens of thousands marched in the wake of the disputed vote, but those numbers have dwindled in the last few months. Winter weather and weariness have contributed, but the incident filmed on the streets of Minsk on March 25 highlights the huge risk Belarusians take in coming out to voice opposition to Lukashenka.
More than 33,000 have been detained, hundreds beaten on the streets or in detention, some described by rights groups as torture, at least four people have been killed, and independent reporters targeted in the government crackdown. “The Belarusian authorities are conducting a targeted campaign of intimidation against civil society in an effort to silence all critics of the government,” Human Rights Watch said on March 18 in a statement.
Crushing Protests
Ahead of the planned action, the commander of Interior Ministry troops, Mikalay Karpyankou, described Belarusian protesters as “enemies of our state,” before vowing to “deal with them quickly,” and harshly as in the past “with pleasure.”
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
Ivan Tertel, the head of the KGB, told Lukashenka on March 9 that foreign actors were applying “unprecedented pressure on our state,” claiming — without providing evidence — that plans had been discovered to “destabilize the situation” in Belarus on March 25-27.
State-run TV had aired footage of Interior Ministry forces drilling ahead of the planned demonstrations. On March 25, police and army officers, police vans, military vehicles, were out in force across Minsk in a not so subtle hint to the public to stay away.
Lukashenka’s government has justified its actions by casting protesters as pawns of foreign forces and being bent on causing havoc.
To avoid being swept up in any mass police crackdown, the Nexta Telegram channel, which has mobilized and coordinated demonstrations, had urged protesters to march through courtyards and organize flash mobs.
Even with less-concentrated crowds, the Belarusian human rights monitor Vyasna said a total of 245 people were detained in 23 cities and towns across Belarus on March 25, including 176 in Minsk.
Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Tsikhanouskaya, said there had been “hundreds of actions,” including fireworks, flash mobs, performances, and courtyard rallies, but acknowledged the “tanks and armored vehicles” deployed by Lukashenka, had “frightened” people along with the earlier repressions and beatings. “It is clear this all had an impact on the number of people [who turned out on March 25],” Viacorka told Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
Growing International Pressure
While Lukashenka may for now “control the streets,” as Tsikhanouskaya herself acknowledged in February, he is losing what leverage he had left on the international stage, at least in the West.
The UN’s top human rights body on March 24 voted to investigate allegations of widespread human rights abuses in Belarus. Russia, which has close ties to Belarus and has helped prop up Lukashenka since the disputed election, was one of the countries to vote against the measure.
UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has been asked to lead the investigation aiming to bring alleged perpetrators to justice. The rights council authorized a budget of $2.5 million and the hiring of 20 experts and staff to carry out the investigation.
Washington, subdued in its criticism under former President Donald Trump, has become more vocal under President Joe Biden. On March 25, the U.S. State Department demanded the immediate release of the more than 290 political prisoners in Belarus, and highlighted the plight of Ihar Losik and Maryya Kalesnikava.
Kalesnikava, who faces national-security charges that supporters say are absurd, had her pretrial detention extended on March 22. Arrested in September, Kalesnikava, a key aide to Tsikhanouskaya and a senior member of the opposition’s Coordination Council, was ordered to remain in detention until May 8.
Losik, a popular blogger and RFE/RL consultant, has been held since June on charges his supporters say are trumped up. He had been charged initially with allegedly using his popular Telegram channel to “prepare to disrupt public order” ahead of the August 9 presidential election.
Losik, 28, tried to slit his wrists and launched a four-day hunger strike on March 11 after being informed he faced new unspecified charges.
The statement by State Department spokesman Ned Price came a day after the top two members of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee also called for the release of all political prisoners in Belarus and pledged their support for the pro-democracy movement in the country. “We will continue to support the Belarusian people’s democratic aspirations until the illegitimate Lukashenka steps down, all political prisoners — including RFE/RL consultant Ihar Losik — are released and, new free and fair elections are held,” Representatives Gregory Meeks (Democrat-New York) and Representative Michael McCaul (Republican-Texas) said in a statement.
The European Union, United States, Canada, and other countries have refused to recognize the 66-year-old as the legitimate leader of Belarus and have slapped him and senior Belarusian officials with sanctions in response to the “falsification” of the vote and postelection crackdown.
Angry Neighbors
On March 25, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania imposed travel bans on another 118 Belarusian officials. The first round of bans since November expands the list of the sanctioned, already containing Lukashenka, to a total of 274, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said.
Lukashenka also faces worsening relations with Poland, which accuses Belarus of persecuting the ethnic Polish community.
Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and a member of the Association of Poles in Belarus was detained in Hrodna early on March 25, two days after the association’s leader, Andzelika Borys, was arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail. The arrest came amid a worsening standoff following tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions this month, including the heads of the Polish consulates in Brest and Hrodna.
And while Belarusians may be for now reluctant to return to the street, more than 750,000 have added their signature to an online campaign launched by Tsikhanouskaya to demand Lukashenka enter internationally mediated talks on ending the political crisis.
Nexta has called for mass protests on March 27, casting it as “the day we start the second wave of street protests.”
Despite the fear instilled by the Lukashenka government crackdown, Viacorka is convinced it is only a matter of time before Belarusians turn out in larger numbers.
“People need to be shoulder to shoulder with one another, to see again that they are the majority, to feel that energy they got from those large marches,” he said.
With reporting by Current Time and RFE/RL’s Belarus Service
The top two members of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 24 called for the release of all political prisoners in Belarus, including RFE/RL consultant Ihar Losik, and pledged their support for the pro-democracy movement in the country.
“We will continue to support the Belarusian people’s democratic aspirations until the illegitimate [Alyaksandr] Lukashenka steps down, all political prisoners – including RFE/RL consultant Ihar Losik – are released and, new free and fair elections are held,” Representatives Gregory Meeks (Democrat-New York) and Representative Michael McCaul (Republican-Texas) said in a statement.
The statement said that in the seven months since Lukashenka “rigged the presidential election” the Belarusian people have “courageously continued their struggle for democracy and freedom in the face of violent repression.”
It also mentioned Freedom Day in Belarus, celebrated on March 25th to commemorate the anniversary of the Belarusian People’s Republic, which existed for less than a year in 1918.
“We stand in solidarity with all of those who, like their forebearers who sought to rid Belarus of authoritarianism in 1918, wave the white-and-red flag and demand a democratic future for their country,” Meeks and McCaul said in the statement.
Losik, 28, has been jailed in Belarus since June on charges his supporters say are trumped up.
The blogger’s wife, Darya Losik, told RFE/RL on March 22 that her husband’s pretrial detention had been prolonged until May 25. RFE/RL President Jamie Fly has condemned the extension and called for his release.
Losik had been charged initially with allegedly using his popular Telegram channel to “prepare to disrupt public order” ahead of the August 9 presidential election.
On March 11, Losik was informed of additional unspecified charges that have never been made public. After hearing of the charges, he slit his wrists and launched a four-day hunger strike.
Over the winter, fewer Belarusians have taken to the streets to demand the ouster of longtime authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid cold weather, a brutal government crackdown, and perhaps fatigue.
Opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya lamented in February that the pro-democracy movement had “lost the streets,” but vowed to seek a revival come spring — starting with a nationwide rally on March 25, which coincides with Freedom Day, the anniversary of a short-lived Belarusian republic founded in 1918.
Lukashenka shows no signs of willingness to compromise, however, and his top security officials have vowed to deal harshly with any new large-scale protests.
Belarus has been in turmoil since Lukashenka, who has been in power since 1994, claimed a landslide victory and a sixth term in the presidential election that millions of Belarusians believe was fixed. The vote followed large rallies across the country that pointed to strong support for Tsikhanouskaya, and her backers contend that she was the actual winner despite an official tally of 10 percent.
No ballot held under Lukashenka has been deemed free, fair, and democratic by impartial international observers.
Since the election, more than 30,000 people have been arrested, hundreds beaten in detention and during demonstrations, and at least four people have been killed in the government crackdown. Allegations of torture abound. Lukashenka and his inner circle have been put under sanctions by the West, which also refused to recognize him as the legitimate leader of Belarus, prompting him to turn to ally Russia even more for support.
On March 18, Tsikhanouskaya, who left for Lithuania under intense pressure from the state after the election, announced an online campaign to demand Lukashenka enter into talks with Belarus’s democratic movement. She proposes that the talks be mediated by the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
“Each of you knows the country is in crisis and it can only be resolved peacefully thru internationally mediated talks,” Tsikhanouskaya said in a statement.
She said the online vote initiative also had the backing of the Coordination Council, which is tasked with overseeing a hoped-for democratic transition, and By_Pol, which brings together former Belarusian security officers and officials who have switched over to the opposition, as well as other democratic forces.
Tsikhanouskaya said that the more Belarusians vote in the online campaign, “the louder the world will hear our demand to resolve the crisis peacefully without any more victims.” She excoriated Lukashenka for “spitting in the face of millions of Belarusians” by refusing to step down after the August 9 election.
As of March 19, some 460,000 people had added their names to support the calls for dialogue on the independent platform Golos, which launched in Belarus last year to monitor the disputed presidential election and is overseeing the online vote.
Tsikhanouskaya’s appeal to Belarusians came a day after she spoke at a videoconference hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, urging Washington to step up sanctions by targeting judges, state-owned enterprises, security officers, government-friendly tycoons, and educational and sports officials.
“People are suffering and dying now. Belarusians, more than ever, need your help,” she told the hearing on March 17.
Will The Crowds Return?
Lukashenka’s opponents could face a hard road ahead.
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country’s legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent.
The chances of recreating the crowds that swelled to over 100,000 in the early days of the protests after the disputed vote are doubtful, argues Kamil Klysinski, a senior fellow at the Warsaw-based OSW Center for Eastern Studies. “[Belarusian] people are indeed tired, disappointed and first of all intimidated by the huge repression which we observe within recent months,” Klysinski said in e-mailed comments.
Belarus is undergoing a “human rights crisis of unprecedented dimension,” said a report that UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet submitted to the UN Human Rights Council on February 25.
The mass protests were met with “mass arbitrary arrests and detentions” of largely peaceful demonstrators, along with “hundreds of allegations of torture and ill-treatment,” Bachelet said in comments that day to a Geneva forum, adding that “not one of the hundreds of complaints for acts of torture and ill-treatment” had been investigated.
Harsh Sentences
In a posthumous ruling issued the same day, a court in Belarus found Henadz Shutau, who was killed by security forces in August 2020, guilty of disobeying police orders.
Human Rights Watch on February 17 said that law enforcement the day before had conducted nationwide raids targeting human rights defenders and activists, searching their homes and offices and detaining at least 40 people.
More than 400 people have been convicted “in connection with participation in illegal mass events and protests that grossly violate public order,” the Belarusian Prosecutor-General’s Office said on March 17. Prosecutors listed examples of people they had pursued, including a 35-year-old man who had “posted insulting comments against law enforcement on the Odnoklassniki social network.” The highest sentence handed out was 10 years.
Journalist Katsyaryna Barysevich (right) and doctor Artsyom Sarokin stand inside a defendants’ cage during a court hearing in Minsk on March 2 in their trial for sharing information about a slain protester.
Last month, 16-year-old Mikita Zalatarou, who suffers from epilepsy, was sentenced to five years in a juvenile prison for participating in what authorities described as “mass riots.” The Belarusian human rights monitor Vyasna lists him as a political prisoner.
On March 16, blogger Ihar Losik, who was arrested in June 2020 on charges of preparing public disorder ahead of the August vote, ended a hunger strike and was placed in solitary confinement. Losik, who is a consultant to RFE/RL on new-media technologies, tried to slit his wrists and launched the hunger strike on March 11 when new, unspecified charges were leveled against him.
‘Enemies Of The State’
Lukashenka’s government has justified its actions by casting protesters as pawns of foreign forces and being bent on causing havoc.
In a meeting with Lukashenka on March 9, Ivan Tertel, the head of the KGB state security agency, spoke of “unprecedented pressure on our state” by foreign actors, without elaborating. Without providing evidence, he claimed his agency had discovered plans to “destabilize the situation” in Belarus on March 25-27.
“Tertel said on state TV…that the KGB ‘knows everything’ about all preparations for the March 25 demonstrations and their reactions will be accordingly quite hard,” Klysinski said.
The commander of Interior Ministry troops, Mikalay Karpyankou, recently described Belarusian protesters as “enemies of our state,” before vowing to “deal with them quickly,” and harshly as in the past “with pleasure.”
Karpyankou is notorious for not only chasing down and beating protesters in Minsk, but has defended the use of firearms against them, and was apparently caught on audio discussing plans to build internment camps for those rounded up in the crackdown.
Karpyankou’s comments came as state TV reported that Interior Ministry troops were drilling for possible mass disorder, displaying some of the hardware that could be deployed in such cases.
With Belarusians facing growing repression and protest numbers down, Lukashenka remains defiant.
At a gathering of thousands of loyalists in Minsk in February, Lukashenka slammed the protests against his rule as a foreign-directed “rebellion,” and vowed that 2021 “will be decisive.”
“No transfer [of power] is possible in Belarus,” Lukashenka said on March 2, discussing his talks last month with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi. He said that a new constitution would be adopted early in 2022 but suggested that it would not lead to a transition away from his rule and added that a “transfer of power” was not on the agenda when he met with Putin.
‘Volcano Of Discontent’
The talks were the first time the two leaders had met in person since September 2020, when Putin extended $1.5 billion in state-backed loans to Lukashenka. The event was preceded by the signing of an agreement on the transshipment of Belarusian fuels (redirected from Lithuania) to Russian ports by the transport ministers of both countries in Moscow on February 19. There were rumors that Putin would extend a further $3 billion to Lukashenka’s government during their talks, but those were denied.
Belarus’s economy has been hit hard not only by the political turmoil, as businesses, especially the extremely profitable IT business, flee Belarus, but the COVID-19 pandemic, which Lukashenka has been accused of mishandling for his failure to enact any lockdown measures.
Lukashenka has other worries as well. The opposition-linked Telegram channel Nexta aired a documentary on March 8 detailing what it alleged to be his luxurious lifestyle, including 17 palatial residences, a fleet of luxury cars and watches, and a “harem.”
Besides the blow to his image as a man of the people, Lukashenka could face a challenge on the political front in his quest to curry favor with the Kremlin, which up till now has stuck with him, rejecting the Tsikhanouskaya-led opposition as Western puppets.
On March 6, the founding congress of the pro-Russian party Soyuz (Union) took place in Minsk. Soyuz casts itself as an opposition faction, favoring tighter Belarusian-Russian integration. Its chairman, Syarhey Lushch, has said the “violent dispersal of the very first protests in Minsk” had left “Lukashenka effectively illegitimate,” while calling for Russia to “play a more active role in stabilizing the situation.”
In the short term, Lukashenka may be able to deal with a fresh wave of protests, Klysinski said.
“But this doesn’t mean that Lukashenka has definitively won,” he added. “He is sitting on a ‘volcano’ of discontent felt by a majority of Belarusians, and he cannot be sure that everything is under full control.”
With reporting by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service and Current Time
Opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya has called on Belarusians to initiate a “second wave of protests” next week and to vote online to support internationally mediated negotiations with Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime.
In a video statement released on March 18, Tsikhanouskaya said that the voting is being launched to help the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations act as mediators in the crisis that erupted after Lukashenka was declared the landslide winner of the August presidential election amid allegations of widespread fraud.
“We launch this voting to start talks with the representatives of [Lukashenka’s] regime, who are ready to think about the future and make mature decisions instead of prolonging the crisis until a full catastrophe. And there are such people,” said Tsikhanouskaya, who is currently in Lithuania, where she relocated for security reasons after the presidential election that she and her supporters say she won.
Calling herself “the leader elected by the Belarusian people,” she also set March 25 for the start of a new series of pro-democracy protests against Lukashenka. The day marks the anniversary of the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic, which existed for less than a year in 1918.
She described Lukashenka’s recent public threat to use the army against the protesters “an act of fear and despair.”
More than 30,000 people have been detained, hundreds beaten, several killed, and journalists targeted in the government’s crackdown on the protest movement.
Lukashenka, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, has resisted international calls to step down.
Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya has called on the United States to put more pressure on authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka by expanding sanctions to bring maximum pressure on the Belarusian regime and force it to answer the opposition’s calls for dialogue.
Tsikhanouskaya, speaking March 17 to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the additional sanctions should target judges, state-owned enterprises, security officers, oligarchs, and educational and sports officials.
“You have to put sanctions on those…’wallets’ of Lukashenka that support the regime,” Tsikhanouskaya said during the videoconference hearing.
This includes oil and gas enterprises, she said, urging Congress to “strike at the regime’s most important benefactors and primary sources of resilience.”
Tsikhanouskaya was invited to testify about the pro-democracy movement in Belarus and the role women have played in particular.
She recounted some of the stories of the “brave women of Belarus” who have stood up to the regime – sometimes standing in front of men to guard them from security forces – in almost daily protests since the August 9 presidential election in which Tsikhanouskaya ran after her husband was jailed while trying to mount his own campaign.
She and her supporters say she was the rightful winner, but Lukashenka claimed victory. The protests that began immediately afterward have demanded new elections, release of people detained during protests, and a dialogue with the government.
But Tsikhanouskaya said they have not been enough.
“Lukashenka still has the resources to retain power,” Tsikhanouskaya said. “So, the United States should insist on stopping the violence, releasing the political prisoners, restoring the rule of law, and launching a genuine dialogue between the legitimate representatives of Belarusians and the regime.”
The people of Belarus need the help immediately “because people are suffering now in this very moment in jails and on the ground,” she said. “This is urgent help.”
According to Tsikhanouskaya, 32,000 people have been detained, 2,500 criminal cases have been initiated, 1,000 cases of torture have been documented by human rights NGOs, and 290 people currently are held as political prisoners. At least eight protesters have been killed, she said, and no government officials has been held accountable for any of the violence.
Western countries have refused to recognize Lukashenka as the legitimate leader and have slapped him and senior Belarusian officials with sanctions in response to the “falsification” of the vote and postelection crackdown.
The U.S. State Department in February imposed visa restrictions on 43 other Belarusian individuals, including people in the justice sector, law enforcement leaders and officers who detained and abused peaceful demonstrators, and judges and prosecutors involved in sentencing protesters and journalists.
But Tsikhanouskaya said those sanctions have not been effective because the individuals know how to avoid the sanctions” and don’t have the kind of assets targeted, such as U.S. bank accounts.
She urged Congress to increase sanctions on judges in particular because this will cause them to “think twice before making a judgment against peaceful demonstration.”
Members of the committee commended Tsikhanouskaya, who delivered her testimony from Lithuania, where she relocated for security reasons, and other women for their courage in standing up to the regime.
Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (Republican-Pennsylvania) said Tsikhanouskaya and other protesters had “stared down overwhelming odds and lit a fire to a renewed democratic spirit” in Belarus. He said Tsikhanouskaya and thousands of women like her had proved to their country and the world that “the future is in their able hands.”
Tsikhanouskaya also noted that a new wave of protests is planned to start on March 25, the day unofficially marked each year as Dzen Voli (Freedom Day) to honor the anniversary of the short-lived Belarusian People’s Republic, which existed for less than a year in 1918.
She urged members of the committee to raise awareness of the protests through social media and any other means.
“International support is extremely important,” she said. “We have to know that the whole world is watching us and that we are not alone.”
Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka said his country may submit a new entry to the Eurovision Song Contest after the first one was rejected for being political.
The song I’ll Teach You by the band Galasy ZMesta sparked a backlash for singing the praises of Lukashenka with lyrics such as, “I’ll teach you how to dance to the tune, I’ll teach you to take the bait, I’ll teach you to walk the line.”
Eurovision organizers on March 11 rejected Minsk’s entry and threatened Belarus with disqualification if it did not submit a modified version of the song or a new entry.
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) said the song would put the “nonpolitical nature” of the contest in question, and that “recent reactions to the proposed entry risk bringing the reputation of the ESC into disrepute.”
Lukashenka has faced nearly daily protests to step down since the country’s presidential election on August 9 handed him another term despite charges the election was rigged.
More than 30,000 people have been arrested, hundreds beaten, and several people killed in the government crackdown on protesters.
Crisis In Belarus
Read our coverage as Belarusians take to the streets to demand the resignation of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and call for new elections after official results from the August 9 presidential poll gave Lukashenka a landslide victory.
Calls to kick out Belarus’s entrant to the annual Eurovision Song Contest had been growing in the run-up to the event in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam on May 18-22.
“They are starting to press us on all fronts,” Lukashenka said on March 13 in his first remarks on the row. “Even at Eurovision, I see.”
“We’ll make another song,” he added, according to the presidential press service.
Belarus’s national broadcaster, BTRC, on February 9 announced it had selected Galasy ZMesta to represent the country at the contest.
The oversight agency for RFE/RL and other U.S. international broadcasters has condemned the Belarusian authorities’ decision to heap further charges on detained blogger and RFE/RL consultant Ihar Losik and demanded his release.
The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) statement on March 12 cited “false charges” that have kept Losik in detention for more than 260 days.
“It’s unacceptable that reporting on the Belarusian election cost a respected journalist his freedom,” USAGM acting Chief Executive Officer Kelu Chao said in a statement. “Belarusian authorities should drop all charges against Ihar and immediately release him.”
Losik was detained in June 2020 and accused of using his Telegram channel to “prepare to disrupt public order” and “preparation for participation in riots” ahead of a presidential vote in August that the opposition has said was rigged for Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Months of unprecedented protests have ensued and been met by thousands of arrests, brutal treatment of detainees, and a ruthless crackdown on media and journalists.
Losik’s wife, Darya, said on March 11, citing a lawyer, that her husband had slit his wrists in front of an investigator and lawyer and restarted a hunger strike after learning of the new charges this week.
She said the precise wording of the new charges was unknown and demanded that Lukashenka explain why her husband has been in prison for nine months.
Losik, a 28-year-old consultant for RFE/RL on new-media technologies and a father of a 2-year-old daughter, ended a six-week hunger strike less than two months ago.
RFE/RL President Jamie Fly said after learning of the new charges that “All of us at RFE/RL are deeply distressed by today’s new charges against Ihar, and his deteriorating health situation.”
He added: “Journalism is not a crime and Ihar has been unjustly detained for far too long. Ihar and his family should not be tortured in this way.”
Losik was slapped with charges in December 2020 that could result in an eight-year prison term.
In protest, Losik, who has been recognized as a political prisoner by rights activists, launched his initial hunger strike.
After ending that action in late January, a handwritten letter from Losik appeared in mid-February following news of a two-year jail sentence given to two journalists from Belsat, a Polish-funded news organization.
“I have no illusion. I think it’ll be about five more years, and by that time I will have died. I no longer have any desire to do anything,” Losik wrote. “So much has already been done, and all for naught: Nothing influences anybody. I’ll say it honestly: I doubt anything will change.”
Western governments have refused to acknowledge Lukashenka as the winner of the August 9 vote, and imposed sanctions on him and his allies, citing election rigging and the police crackdown.
Lukashenka has refused to step down and says he will not negotiate with the opposition.
