UNHRC on situation in Belarus: Continuing police raids against NGOs and media, arrests of journos and activists
An interactive dialogue on the human rights situation in Belarus took place on September 24 at the 48th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights considers that the human rights situation in Belarus has continued to worsen in 2021.
“I am deeply concerned by increasingly severe restrictions on civic space and fundamental freedoms, including continuing patterns of police raids against civil society organizations and independent media, and the arrests and criminal prosecutions of human rights activists and journalists on what routinely appear to be politically motivated charges.
Over 650 individuals in Belarus are now believed to be imprisoned because of their opinions – among them, members of the opposition, human rights defenders, journalists, protesters and activists, including the chair of well-known human rights group Viasna,” High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet stressed.
She recalled that 129 civil society organisations had been closed down or were in the process of liquidation by the authorities, including several long-standing partners of the UN human rights mechanisms; nearly journalists and media workers were reportedly detained in 2020, with at least 68 subjected to ill-treatment.
“I am alarmed by persistent allegations of widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment in the context of arbitrary arrests and detention of protesters. We have no evidence to date of any genuine and impartial investigations has taken place into reports of incidents that took place during the dispersal of demonstrations in the days following 9 August 2020. During these incidents hundreds of protesters were violently beaten by security officers, in particular by riot police and special police forces. Many protesters, including children, were also subjected to ill-treatment in detention. At least four protesters died,” she said in Friday’s statement.
According to the Belarusian human rights centre Viasna, the interactive dialogue was attended by representatives of 46 countries and a number of international human rights organizations, which raised issues of repression against human rights defenders, journalists, opposition and civil society activists, torture and arbitrary detention, liquidation of many NGOs over the past 12 months, and the lengthy prison terms handed down in politically motivated criminal trials, including against Maryia Kalesnikava and Maksim Znak, the forced landing of a Ryanair plane and the detention of Raman Pratasevich and Sofiya Sapega, the migration crisis on the Belarusian border with Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.
Representatives of European countries called for the release of all political prisoners and an end to repression, for transparent investigations at the national level, so that all perpetrators could be brought to justice, for an inclusive dialogue between the authorities and civil society, and for cooperation with all UN special procedures and OHCHR experts.
Traditionally, a number of countries, including Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba, the Russian Federation, China, Syria, Lebanon, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and others, condemned the ‘politicization’ of the Council’s actions and the fact that this interactive dialogue is conducted without Belarus’s consent, Viasna reports. They also criticized the Council’s decision to investigate human rights violations in Belarus as ‘infringement’ on the country’s sovereignty.
belsat.eu,via spring96.org, ohchr.org
