GENEVA - There is no sign of improvement in the human rights situation in Belarus, and the authorities are disregarding offers of cooperation, a UN expert said today.
Nils Muižnieks was recently appointed as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus. He presented the annual report of the mandate to the Human Rights Council's 59th session, covering the period between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025. During this period, Belarus held presidential elections on 26 January 2025, with Aliaksandr Lukashenka being re-elected for a seventh term.
"My predecessor noted in one of her reports that elections have been a catalyst for human rights violations in Belarus. This holds true for my mandate as well - the closer the elections, the greater the repression," Muižnieks said.
The expert referred to a surge in human rights violations in the run-up to recent elections, including the persecution of the family members of individuals recognised by human rights defenders as political prisoners, as well as trials in absentia. "The authorities are not only going after people who have fled abroad, they are also increasingly confiscating their property in Belarus," he said.
The Special Rapporteur drew a grim picture of systematic human rights violations in Belarus. These include large-scale politically motivated prosecutions, severe ill-treatment of prisoners (including prolonged incommunicado detention and gender-based violence against women prisoners), and repeated extensions of prison terms for "malicious disobedience" to penitentiary administrations.
"Imagine this: you have almost served your full prison sentence, which was imposed on you unjustly for exercising your human rights. You have suffered awful conditions and ill-treatment. You are about to be released when the authorities inform you that your sentence has been extended by another year," Muižnieks said, noting that some prisoners had seen their sentences extended in this way three times.
The Special Rapporteur stressed that the overall number of persons unjustly imprisoned remained steady while repression continued, despite the recent waves of presidential pardons. Furthermore, the pardons have sometimes been accompanied by new human rights violations, such as forcing prisoners to make propaganda videos or sign cooperation agreements with the Committee of State Security to secure their release.
The expert expressed his regret that Belarusian authorities had refused to cooperate with his mandate, ignoring his request to visit the country, and only providing formal and uninformative responses to communications sent jointly with thematic special procedures.
