Key Notes from Civil Society Parallel Forum in Minsk

Mik­lós Haraszti said he was glad to vis­it Belarus even as an expert at a side event of the OSCE; how­ev­er, he remarked the unwel­com­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the Belaru­sian offi­cials.

“Their stand­ing stays the same: Belarus does not rec­og­nize the man­date of Spe­cial Rap­por­teur and do not intend to coop­er­ate.”

Mik­lós Haraszti expressed his hope that after the OSCE event the human rights sit­u­a­tion in Belarus will change for the bet­ter.

Maria Dahle, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Human Rights House Foun­da­tion, spoke about the glob­al ten­den­cies in human rights defense in Belarus and in the region, under­lin­ing increas­ing and more sophis­ti­cat­ed pres­sure on human rights defend­ers.

“Human rights defend­ers are increas­ing­ly under threat in this part of the world, but it’s not only here, it is glob­al decline in rights and free­doms. Repres­sions are going on for many years in coun­tries such as Rus­sia, Azer­bai­jan, and Belarus in this region. Repres­sions are becom­ing more fre­quent and more severe. The author­i­ties are becom­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed in the meth­ods they use against civ­il soci­ety.”

“We see harass­ment, attacks, the use of leg­is­la­tion to crim­i­nal­ize the work of human rights defend­ers. They put restric­tions on trav­el, on fund­ing, in par­tic­u­lar, on for­eign fund­ing and oper­a­tions of orga­ni­za­tions. And this is some­thing sys­tem­at­ic in the region.”

Accord­ing to Maria Dahle, the most tar­get­ed groups in the region are human rights defend­ers work­ing on women’s rights, minor­i­ty rights, rights of LGBT peo­ple and sex­u­al minori­ties, and human rights defend­ers work­ing on cor­rup­tion issues.

“Peo­ple in pow­er don’t want to lose pow­er. There is polit­i­cal pow­er, finan­cial pow­er, they don’t want to lose the ben­e­fits that they have. What they do is they seek to silence the inde­pen­dent crit­i­cal voic­es that are try­ing to increase the space of rights and free­doms with the civ­il soci­ety, to par­tic­i­pate in the devel­op­ment of the soci­ety. We see the spread of fear, the spread of self-cen­sor­ship, and we see the reduced activ­i­ties by civ­il soci­ety as an effect, as a con­se­quence of these actions by the gov­ern­ment.”

“We see this shrink­ing space for civ­il soci­ety, we there are oth­er NGOs, GON­GOs, tak­ing over the space – gov­ern­men­tal­ly orga­nized NGOs, set up to sup­port the government’s nar­ra­tives and poli­cies. They are dis­re­spect­ing the nor­mal nar­ra­tive and the call for to [pro­mote] human rights, free­doms, what is done by inde­pen­dent civ­il soci­ety.”

The chair­per­son of HRC Vias­na Ales Biali­ats­ki under­lined the unique char­ac­ter of the Forum, stat­ing that this is the first event in 13 years, gath­er­ing human rights defend­ers and civ­il activists from dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions and regions.

“Ahead of the ses­sion of the PA OSCE, we decid­ed to unite our voic­es and reit­er­ate our views of the exist­ing human rights issues in Belaru­sian soci­ety. The civ­il soci­ety has recent­ly adopt­ed the “Posi­tion of Belaru­sian Human Rights Orga­ni­za­tions” list­ing the cur­rent prob­lems: polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, death penal­ty, large-scale repres­sions in spring this year that touched civ­il soci­ety and civ­il activists, and sys­temic vio­la­tions of human rights under­go­ing in Belarus.

We state there is lack of mea­sures aimed to improve human rights sit­u­a­tion at sys­temic lev­el. The Repub­lic of Belarus did not take efforts to imple­ment urgent restora­tive mea­sures, which Belarus human rights com­mu­ni­ty has repeat­ed­ly demand­ed. Any moment, the sit­u­a­tion might regress, get worse. So, our Forum is such a call, in the first place, for Belarus gov­ern­ment to imple­ment inter­na­tion­al human rights oblig­a­tions.

We also call on the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to keep an eye on human rights in Belarus.  Belarus is a coun­try neigh­bor­ing to Euro­pean states, and part of col­lec­tive sys­tems, like OSCE. More­over, Belarus has under­tak­en cer­tain oblig­a­tions in the sphere of human rights, so it has to observe them. This our gen­er­al mes­sage, and we hope it will be lived up to.

Our Forum is attend­ed by var­i­ous rep­re­sen­ta­tives, includ­ing deputies of the Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly, Vice Chair of the PA OSCE, and Mr Haraszti is present here, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of many author­i­ta­tive inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there are no Belaru­sian offi­cials here. This agains under­lines that today they are not striv­ing to sit at a vir­tu­al or real nego­ti­a­tion table to dis­cuss burn­ing issues exist­ing in Belarus,” said the human rights defend­er.

Yuri Dzhi­bladze under­lined the impor­tance of the event:

“If I had been told a year ago that we would orga­nize an inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence here today – I would not have believed. Thanks God, today it is con­ve­nient for Belarus author­i­ties to take sym­bol­ic steps. With­out chang­ing the nature of the pow­er and the polit­i­cal sys­tem, but still take these steps: allow the Spe­cial Rap­por­teur, even with con­di­tions, to vis­it the coun­try; to allow the Forum. It is good that none Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety leader is in prison. And even I have been able to come to Belarus for the first time with­in six years, as I had been under entry ban before.

The speak­er remarked that the human rights sit­u­a­tion and the rule of law are in decline cur­rent­ly, as gov­ern­ments and politi­cians and even rep­re­sen­ta­tives of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions shift atten­tion to safe­ty issues linked with real prob­lems – ter­ror­ist threats, migra­tion cri­sis and war in the East of Ukraine.

“The whole com­plex of prob­lems dis­tracts atten­tion from human rights, and on the oth­er hand, it is suc­cess­ful­ly used by author­i­ta­tive lead­ers in many coun­tries of the region.”

“At the back­ground it fol­lows that the voice of civ­il soci­ety is grow­ing espe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant. Many OSCE mem­bers, PA mem­bers, politi­cians from dif­fer­ent coun­tries share our views and can ground on our con­clu­sions, rec­om­men­da­tions, doc­u­ments that allows them to coun­ter­act to neg­a­tive ten­den­cies. That is why civ­il soci­ety and human rights defend­ers and activists are increas­ing­ly exposed to harass­ment, pres­sure, attacks and risks. We in fact deal with unprece­dent­ed pres­sure, with the nar­row­ing space for civ­il soci­ety all over the world, and we have to pay more and more atten­tion to this issue, to sup­port, to sol­i­dar­i­ty, to defense of our col­leagues along­side with fight­ing neg­a­tive ten­den­cies,” said Yuri Dzhi­bladze.

Head of the East­ern Europe and Cen­tral Asia Desk of FIDH Sasha Koulaye­va remarked the step for­ward tak­en by Belarus author­i­ties with the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges faced by the coun­try, and that the Forum did take place.

“I have to under­line that after the Forum guests leave, our atten­tion on Belarus will be espe­cial­ly intense, as expe­ri­ence shows the cycling nature of repres­sions in the coun­try. 

“An impor­tant issues us that no sys­temic changes have tak­en place that would pre­vent human rights vio­la­tions in future, which has been proved by the spring events this year, when not only peace­ful assem­blies were bru­tal­ly dis­persed, but the fol­low­ing tri­als demon­strat­ed depen­dence of the judi­cia­ry on the exec­u­tive author­i­ty. In this con­text, one can­not speak of real progress.”

Sasha Koulaye­va remarked they could not help greet­ing the release of sev­er­al peo­ple from jail, how­ev­er, the very release shows quite a volatile treat­ment of the judi­cia­ry:

“It is unclear how peo­ple charged with such seri­ous crimes could be set free that eas­i­ly, with­out expla­na­tions. As well as the ques­tion is open how the oppo­si­tion leader Mikalai Statke­vich, arrest­ed before the demon­stra­tion, was released from the KGB deten­tion facil­i­ty with­out any expla­na­tions, when the need [to hold him there] expired”.

The FIDH rep­re­sen­ta­tive also men­tioned the issue of remain­ing death penal­ty in Belarus:

“This is a tough chal­lenge to the whole OSCE region, since only two coun­tries in the space keep the prac­tice of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. And the depen­dence of the judi­cia­ry, which I men­tioned before, is obvi­ous at every stage of sen­tenc­ing a per­son to death penal­ty: from the moment of deten­tion, to grant­i­ng a lawyer at an ear­ly stage, con­di­tions of impris­on­ment, and final­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of appeal which in fact does not exist.”

Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive Aisha Jung stressed that her orga­ni­za­tion con­demned the mass repres­sions in March and April.

“The response of the author­i­ties to the peace­ful protests was extreme even by the Belaru­sian stan­dards.”

“Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al has doc­u­ment­ed now for many years and spo­ken up against the vio­la­tions of free­dom of assem­bly, asso­ci­a­tion, and expres­sion in Belarus. This lat­est wave of repres­sion sig­nals at dis­ap­point­ing regres­sion by the author­i­ties, in response to which Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al strength­ens its calls that these rights have to be respect­ed and pro­tect­ed and for Belaru­sians to get orga­nized and par­tic­i­pate in peace­ful protests with­out inter­fer­ence.”

Aisha Jung also men­tioned the issue of death penal­ty in Belarus along­side with 40 years’ anniver­sary of Amnesty’s cam­paign against death penal­ty:

“In that time we see huge glob­al momen­tum towards abo­li­tion both inter­na­tion­al­ly and also in the post-Sovi­et space, leav­ing only Belarus sole exe­cu­tion­er in Europe and in for­mer Sovi­et Union. Quot­ing the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty on this sub­ject: “Belarus simul­ta­ne­ous­ly demon­strates total dis­re­gard to its insti­tu­tions, with five men exe­cut­ed since 2016, three of whose cas­es were pend­ing at the Human Rights Com­mit­tee.” It’s the high­est num­ber of exe­cu­tions since 2008.

Secre­cy sur­round­ing the death penal­ty in Belarus amounts to ill-treat­ment of the fam­i­lies, and Amnesty calls for the secre­cy to be lift­ed and fam­i­lies to be called to final meet­ings; to ensure clar­i­ty on the dates of exe­cu­tion, and fur­ther dis­clo­sure of bur­ial sites of their loved-ones.”

When in Novem­ber 2016 three per­sons were exe­cut­ed, Amnesty launched an inter­na­tion­al cam­paign call­ing for an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on death penal­ty.

“I have the results of that cam­paign here: we’ve gath­ered over 18 thou­sand sig­na­tures from around the world call­ing on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to intro­duce an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on death sen­tences with the view to full abo­li­tion. Amnesty is opposed to death sen­tences under any cir­cum­stances. It con­sti­tutes inhu­mane and degrad­ing treat­ment and is a vio­la­tion of the right to life. … We remain com­mit­ted to see full of abo­li­tion of death penal­ty in Belarus and this will be focus of our wok for the next cou­ple of years, along­side the 40-year anniver­sary of our cam­paign­ing on this issue.”