On the first anniversary of Belarus’ unprecedented crackdown on the Human Rights Center Viasna (“Viasna”), 20 international and Belarusian human rights organisations including Amnesty International are launching a campaign to demand the release of seven detained Viasna members and raise awareness of the plight of hundreds of others who have been prosecuted and imprisoned solely for exercising their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression
Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, An Exiled Belarusian Presidential Candidate, Says European Leaders Would Do More For Her Nation
After Hearing That His Family And Neighbours Would Face Prosecution If He Did Not Plead Guilty, A 41-Year-Old Belarusian Man Attempted To Cut His Own Neck At A Court Hearing In Minsk On June 1. Last Year, As Major Protests Erupted In Belarus Over The Disputed Presidential Election Results, Stsyapan Latypau Was Imprisoned As Part Of A Violent Crackdown On Dissent
(28 May), Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy told journalists that “to say from the start” that the landing in Minsk of a Ryanair plane flying from Greece to Lithuania on Sunday and the subsequent arrest of blogger Raman Pratasevich was a “forced landing, to condemn it and to impose sanctions without any investigation; this kind of behaviour is absolutely irresponsible”
After being convicted of threatening a police officer in an online chat room, a Belarusian man faces two years of forced labour, while a 19-year-old arrested for displaying an opposition flag in his student dorm window faces seven years in jail on extremism charges. Following a months-long crackdown on the opposition in the aftermath of a widely regarded rigged presidential election, Belarusian authorities are now tightening their grip on even the tiniest signs of dissent
More than 100 men and women have been barred from competitive sports in Belarus since signing an open letter calling for an end to police violence against peaceful anti-government protesters
After more than five months of systematic restrictions on press freedom, the Belarusian authorities are stepping up their crackdown on the media by now prosecuting journalists under criminal law. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) have lodged a referral to the UN for cases of arbitrary arrests
2020 brought an unprecedented scene of protests in Belarus, after a presidential poll showed longtime leader Alexander Lukashenko getting 80 percent of the vote
One was a theater director, another worked at an oil refinery, but both have fled repression in Belarus after joining mass protests against an August election widely seen as rigged and are now refugees in neighboring Latvia
Every week, lines of people gather overnight outside a detention center in Minsk, hoping to deliver packets of food and clothing for loved ones being held inside when the gates open in the morning.