The United Nations Office at Geneva
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HRC58 - Human Rights in Belarus - 19 March 2025
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MP4
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Interactive dialogue with the Group of Independent Experts on the Human Rights Situation in Belarus, on its latest report, at the 58th session of the Human Rights Council.
Opening statements by:
- Karinna Moskalenko, Chair of the Group of Independent Experts on Belarus
- Larysa Belskaya, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Belarus to the UN in Geneva (country concerned)
The video includes three audio tracks: first track Interlingua (= floor), second track English and third track Russian.
Teleprompter
You have the floor, Madam.
Mr Vice President, distinguished delegates, I'm grateful for the opportunity to address the Human Rights Council today on behalf of the Group of Independent Experts on Belarus, together with Doctor Susan Brazile and Professor Monica Platek, our group is pleased to present the Human Rights Council with the report requested in its Resolution 5527.
Let us start with stressing that we very much regret that the Government of Belarus has not engaged and cooperated with our group as requested in this Council's Resolution 5527.
The group repeatedly requested access to the country and information necessary to carry out its mandate, as well as detailed information on the steps taking to prevent and investigate deaths in detention.
The group did not receive any response for those requests.
I will start by reporting on the activities we have undertaken since our last interactive dialogue in September.
Despite the impact of the liquidity crisis on our staffing and operational capacity, our group held a number of consultations on accountability with various stakeholders, including representatives of the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, national authorities of in countries hosting Belarusian refugees, civil society organisations, the OSCE and members of the diplomatic community.
Their group also held regular meetings with the Special Rapporteur on Belarus and other related special mechanisms.
In line with our enhanced our accountability mandate, we established the straight state structures that have enabled the human rights violations.
We prepared a list of Allstate entities involved in the Commission of the violations and we preserved and analysed public statements from **** level Belarusian officials.
We mapped out have all detention facilities in which torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment have been documented.
We prepared a consolidated list of all individuals allegedly responsible for human rights violations since May 2020, and we are currently preparing individual profiles of persons of interest, namely those who bear the greatest responsibility for human rights violations.
Mr Vice President, let me now turn to the current human rights situation in Belarus.
Our team conducted interviews with Belarusians in exile to identify the root causes of the human rights violations committed since the 1st of May 2020.
We determined that the violent response of the Belarusian authorities to the unprecedented mass protests that had preceded and followed the 2020 presidential election was not an isolated incident, but the latest manifestation of a long standing pattern of governance.
We considered that several interconnected structural factors, including the absence of truly democratic institutions, the lack of an independent judiciary, the perception of civil society as a ******, and the culture of impunity have set the stage for the human rights violations we have observed in since 2020.
Until those structural factors are addressed, the repression and violence are likely are likely to continue, forcing more Belarusians into exile.
The recent result of the January 2025 presidential elections represent more root causes of the repression in Belarus.
There were no candidates to Mount Jenin opposition to President Lukashenko.
With hundreds of thousands of Belarusians in exile and more than 1200 political prisoners remaining in detention, arbitrary arrest and detention have become a permanent feature of the repressive tactics of Belarusian authorities.
In contrast to previous election cycles, when mass arrests would occurs for some time after the elections and then subside, the wave of arrests and detentions that began shortly before the presidential election in 2020 has persisted to the present day.
In 2024, courts tried more than 7500 people on politically motivated charges.
This is an increase of hundred a month compared with 2023.
We have ample evidence that those arrested on political grounds in the last four years were subjected to torture and I'll treatment.
Out of the 161 interviewed persons who had been arrested at least once, 52 were victims of ill treatment and sometimes torture during arrest, interrogation, transportation or detention.
We found that Belarusian authorities continue to apply a harsher regime of detention on those arrested on politically motivated charges.
Men and women who served short sentences at temporary detention facilities were systematically subjected to discriminatory, degrading, and punitive conditions of detention amounting to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and, in some instances, torture.
We also documented several cases of torture and the treatment in penal colonists colonies across the country.
Ahead of the 2025 presidential election, Belarusian authorities continued their efforts to purge the civic and Democrat space with all potential sources of dissent.
Last year, another 228 civil society organisations were liquidated.
In addition, 87 entities and 1168 persons were added to the extremist list.
Authorities tightened their control of schools and religious communities and introduced legislative measures drastically restricting forms of LGBT IQ plus expressions.
They've expanded the surveillance capability of law enforcement bodies and launched criminal proceedings in in absentia against hundreds of Belarusians in exile, exposing them to imprisonment on return.
We have reasonable grounds to believe that some of human rights violations documented in our report amount to the crimes against humanity of political persecution and imprisonment.
The group established that the orchestrated campaign of violence was directed against Belarusians perceived as being critical or opposed to the government.
The continuing involvement of the multiple state actors within the security apparatus and complete lack of accountability suggests that attack against the civilian population remains ongoing, Widespread, systematic, carried out in furtherance of government policy.
The violations and crime crimes engage engage both the responsibility of the State of Belarus and individual criminal responsibility.
Mr Vice President, ensuring accountability for these violations and related crimes is imperative to ensure their non occurrence.
Belarusian authorities systematically failed to investigate, prosecute and punish the human rights violations and crimes committed in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
With the judiciary in hands of the executive, the systematic punishment of lawyers, the systemic fair trial rights violations, Belarus clearly demonstrates its inability and unwillingness to prosecute international crimes under its jurisdiction.
For that reason, we believe that accountability initiatives must must come from international community.
Several countries have already responded in a range of ways, including through a state referral to the International Criminal Court and by opening the massive investigations under the universal jurisdiction principle.
Pursuing accountability at the international level and the third countries are not mutually exclusive options, nor do they prevent future judicial proceedings in Belarus.
That we therefore encourage all stakeholders to consider these options to continue documenting evidence for future processes.
In conclusion, we urge the Human Rights Council members to continue to pay close attention to developments in Belarus.
We stand ready to continue to investigate whether credible progress is being made in advancing justice, accountability and respect for human rights, and to give voices to the Belarusians who entrust us with their stories of loss and hope for the better future in Belarus.
Thank you for your attention.
Thank.
You, Madam President, don't meant.
Not I now give the thank you.
I now give the floor to distinguished representative of Belarus.
You have 5 minutes of Excellency.
Thank you very much, President.
The report presented today is one more sad indication of how the selective country mechanisms turn the international aspect of human rights work into a farce.
This Ave is a dead end for the work of the Human Rights Council.
The HRC has no mandate for so-called investigations and assessments of the political mechanisms of sovereign states.
It is counterproductive to create any country mechanisms without the consent of the country affected.
The dissemination of the practise of creating country mechanisms makes it clear that they serve the interests of their initiators but do not facilitate cooperation.
These mandates, above all, serve the manipulative politics of the West.
They want more mandates and more Odios.
Conclusions On the basis of the reports, the West is inducing Ucms justifying interference in domestic affairs and electoral process of financing those who are violating pollution, statehood and lobbying sanctions to cause harm to the country they could not take over.
These are their own position is used as a source data source of information for the reports.
They present purely ideological approaches as objective analysis.
They are not independent.
They are not responsible for the accuracy of the information or of how these sometimes libellous conclusions are invented.
Any critical person can study these reports and see that they are unfounded commissioned essays.
Supposedly, they are to explain why the European Union has claimed that Belarus is a pernicious violative human rights.
The Special Rapporteur and the Group of Experts are spending a lot of the UN's money to create unfounded assumptions in the style of there are reasonable grounds to believe that, but what is reasonable about claiming that in a peaceful country, international crimes are being committed?
It appears that at any price they are trying to support the negative background noise against my country.
Fake news is being created about supposed ****** repressions of protests against the regime.
An illusion is being created of this terrible 9 million person country, Belarus.
How can it be an enemy to all of Europe with its 450 millions?
Five years has passed since the presidential elections in Belarus, which the West tried to use to explode the political system in the country and create chaos.
They failed, but they're back.
Increasing pressure against Belarus confirms this.
The Belarusian state and society survived in 2020, and we will do so now.
The country is growing, developing confidently, moving in the direction of progress.
The recent presidential elections were when the people confirmed that they chose stability.
The people of Belarus is doing everything it can, and the state is doing everything it can.
All of its efforts to protect the rights of its citizens, peace and prosperity.
Hundreds of NGOs and unions supporting this policy, and they are resolving the problems of people protecting rights without standing up against the state.
In Belarus, there are no political persecutions.
There are clear legal frameworks for realising economic, social, civil, political, cultural and other rights.
The law is 1 for all, regardless of personal or professional activity.
Everyone is responsible before the law equally and responsible for violations regardless of whether they are in the country or abroad.
However, humanity is an important aspect of our policies.
There were pardons in 2024 for 293 people who confessed to crimes related to anti state activity.
For three years we have had a functioning Commission reviewing requests from citizens abroad to regulate their legal situation in the country.
Belarus intends to continue to follow our path towards progress in human rights in line with our national conditions and sovereign interests, as is enshrined by the UN Charter.
We do not need politicised tools in the Human Rights Council serving a group of countries to render pressure on Belarus.
We call for these mechanisms to be shut down.