According to the Viasna Human Rights Center, at least 1,213 individuals have been arrested since September 2024 on top of 975 arrested over the summer for such crimes as distributing “extremist materials” and participating in protests, with the actual number being possibly higher.
Those arrested are then sentenced through an ‘administrative process’. The practice, carried over from the Soviet era, allows for sentences to be meted out by executive bodies, i.e. administration, without the involvement of the court, essentially amounting to extrajudicial punishment.
What the Belarusian regime considers extremism may include the sharing or even accessing of content by independent media on the Internet and social media channels, that have been proscribed by the Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime. These include contents such outlets as
Belsat, the Belarusian-language subsidiary of Poland’s public broadcaster TVP, or the Polish Radio, as well as social media posts critical of the authorities.
Other ‘extremist content’ includes national symbols other than the official, Soviet-inspired ones, for example, the
Pahonia coat of arms or the white-red-white flag, and even the combination of colors itself.
In recent days, pismo.bel, a website that allows users to write letters to political prisoners, which letters are subsequently delivered by volunteers, has been deemed ‘extremist’. What is considered extremist can seem completely arbitrary, as in November, the Belarusian KGB decided that some neighborhood group chats fall under the category as well.
The most recent wave of arrests carried out on November 14 targeted relatives of dissidents, including ones that have sought shelter abroad.
Pavel Latushka, a former culture minister under Lukashenko, and currently the head of the National Anti-Crisis Management and deputy prime minister in Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s government in exile, appealed to Western governments and institutions to react to this most recent wave of political repressions.
“In every region of Belarus activists, relatives of political prisoners, volunteers & people who have traveled abroad since 2020 are being subjected to particularly harsh repression,” Latushka wrote in a post on X on Friday. “The dictator must understand that his ‘preparation’ for reappointment will not go unnoticed, that politically motivated persecutions will not go unpunished, and the Belarusian people must know they are not left alone to face Lukashenko’s repressive machine.”
Getting ready for ‘elections’
Belarusia’s democratic opposition believes that the wave of repression is meant to ‘soften’ the society ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for January 26 next year. The vote is widely expected to be rigged with the obvious outcome being the ‘re-election’ of Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus for three decades, to another term in office.
The previous elections held in 2020 resulted in a wave of protests the regime brutally cracked down upon.
The repressions are also connected to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, during the initial weeks of which Belarusian territory was used as a staging ground for a Russian invasion force that launched an offensive toward Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv.
Even before the invasion, Belarus also saw constant military drills involving Russian armed forces being carried out on its territory. The large-scale military exercises Zapad, which have been organized jointly with Russian forces on Belarusian territory every four years, are scheduled to take place in the first half of next year from the usual autumn date.
Back in late October, Latushka told the Polish Forsal business news outlet that “Russia’s ambassador to Minsk, Boris Gryzlov, said that if there will be protests in Belarus, they [Russia] are ready to support their ally. This means that Russia said it is ready to send the army to suppress protests during the rigged elections.”
Political prisoners
According to Viasna, there are some 1,300 political prisoners detained in Belarus, including the organization’s members, among them its leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Alex Bialatski.
The regime has recently
released 31 political prisoners , including some individuals who are ill, but the so-called ‘humanitarian list’ is much longer. Held in deliberately poor conditions, some of the prisoners die in detention, often under suspicious circumstances.
Radio Svoboda, a subsidiary of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, recently reported, on the
death of 22-year-old Dzmitry Shlethauer , who was sentenced to 12 years for “espionage” and “facilitating extremist activities”. His family told Radio Svoboda that they were informed Shlethauer, who prior to the arrest was in good health, died of “mechanical asphyxiation,” orphaning a child born after he was detained.
