“The practice of incommunicado detention of members of the political opposition and prominent figures sentenced to lengthy prison terms for voicing dissent increased in 2023,” the 18 Special Rapporteurs and Human Rights Council-appointed Working Group rights’ experts said. In their statement released by UN rights office OHCHR, they reported that according to the Viasna Human Rights Centre, 1,511
Read MoreThe report, covering the period between May 2020 and December 2022, draws on interviews with 207 victims and witnesses and an analysis of more than 2,500 items of evidence, including photographs, videos, medical, and court records. ‘Unacceptable picture of impunity’ “Our report paints an unacceptable picture of impunity and the near-total destruction of civic space
Read More“The prison sentences delivered today in Belarus against four human rights defenders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, are deeply troubling and indicative of the ongoing repression in the country,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN human rights office, OHCHR. UN human rights chief Volker Türk has called for an end to the
Read MoreMr. Bialiatski, a veteran rights campaigner and founder of Viasna (or “spring”) civil society group, was arrested in July 2021 on tax evasion charges, along with two other activists, and reportedly held in dreadful conditions in a prison in Minsk. Their trial began on Thursday. “We are gravely concerned by the trial of Nobel Peace
Read MoreThe Aarhus Convention, adopted in 1998, also requires that individuals exercising these rights are not persecuted, penalized or harassed for doing so. Belarus’s President Aleksandr Lukashenko signed a decree on 18 July effectively ending the country’s participation. Withdrawal is scheduled to take effect on 24 October, in line with article 21 of the Convention. Strengthening
Read MorePresenting her annual report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Anaïs Marin, Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Belarus, pointed to Government policies that have systematically tightened legislation and restricted civil and political rights. She said it was a trend that has continued in the two years since the UN rights office,
Read More