The international community must support civil society in Belarus by ensuring justice and accountability after the country has systematically eradicated all human rights organisations over the past year, Right Livelihood and Laureate organisation Viasna told the UN Human Rights Council on Thursday.
Read our joint statement here.
Addressing the 49th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, we drew attention to the brutal crackdown on Belarusian civil society that has taken place since protests had broken out against fraudulent presidential elections in 2020.
“Zero: this is, in fact, the number of legally operating human rights organisations left in the country, after the government liquidated more than 275 of them in 2021 [alone],” our statement said.
“The authorities have also continued to prosecute people on political charges with Belarus now counting over 1,000 political prisoners.”
Viasna founder and 2020 Right Livelihood Laureate Ales Bialiatski, along with Viasna members Valiantsin Stefanovic, Uladzimir Labkociv, Marfa Rabkova, Tatsiana Lasitsa, Andrei Chapiuk and Leanid Sudalenka, are among the human rights defenders behind bars.
In a further attempt to criminalise their work, some of Viasna’s resources have recently been labelled “extremist material,” our statement noted.
“International mechanisms are now essential for justice and accountability in Belarus. We thus call on all States to support the Belarusian civil society, inside and outside the country,” we urged.
We also called on Belarus to “immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners,” including Viasna’s coworkers.
The statement was read during a debate about a UN report on the situation of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and in its aftermath. We called on the Human Rights Council, in particular, to renew the mandate for this UN reporting mechanism.
