GENEVA: Serious human rights violations remain rampant in Belarus, United Nations investigators said Friday, adding that some of the abuses by President Alexander Lukashenko’s government amounted to crimes against humanity.
“The government of Belarus has committed widespread human rights violations against the country’s civilian population, some amounting to crimes against humanity, as part of a brutal effort to quash all opposition” to Lukashenko’s rule, a UN group of independent experts said in a statement.
Publishing its first report since its establishment nearly a year ago, the group said it had documented “egregious violations,” including widespread torture, and warned that arbitrary arrests and detention on politically motivated grounds had “become a fixture of the tactics of Belarusian authorities.”
Among its conclusions, the report said “the crime against humanity of persecution on political grounds has been committed against Belarusians perceived as being critical of, or opposed to, the government.”
The expert group was created last April by the UN Human Rights Council, and tasked with investigating and establishing “the facts, circumstances and root causes of all alleged human rights violations and abuses committed in Belarus” since May 1, 2020.
The experts, who are independent and do not speak for the United Nations, were also asked to “collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of such violations and abuses and, where possible, to identify those responsible,” to help bring them to justice.
Belarus was gripped by months of unprecedented anti-government demonstrations after an August 2020 election resulted in a sixth term for Lukashenko — a staunch ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Lukashenko went on to win a seventh term last month in what critics termed a “sham election.”
The 2020 protests were followed by a brutal crackdown.
The UN experts said they conducted nearly 200 interviews in person and remotely with victims, witnesses and others in exile, and examined a large trove of video, photo and other documents for their report.
They said they had gathered “ample evidence” that men and women arrested on politically motivated grounds between 2020 and 2024 “were subjected to torture and ill-treatment at all stages of their detention.”
They reported beatings, electric shocks and rape threats against both detainees and their partners.
“Security forces displayed marked brutality toward LGBTIQ+ individuals, using physical violence and dehumanizing language,” the experts said.
People detained on politically motivated grounds in penal colonies across the country had meanwhile “described a discriminatory regime of detention designed not only to punish them, but also to crush any form of political resistance,” the report said.
It also highlighted how the Belarusian government last year adopted measures that “purged most potential sources of dissent and opposition,” including through enhanced digital surveillance used to monitor online activities, often leading to prosecutions.
Last year alone, at least 228 civil society organizations were “liquidated,” it said.
The experts called on the Belarusian government to immediately release all those unlawfully or arbitrarily detained, and to promptly launch independent and transparent investigations into all abuses, especially those thought to amount to crimes against humanity.
And the group called on the international community to help ensure accountability for the abuses, including through universal jurisdiction.