UN Human Rights Council registers complaint against BAJ’s illegal liquidation

The Chair­man of BAJ, Andrei Bas­tunets, sub­mit­ted an indi­vid­ual com­mu­ni­ca­tion on the actions of the Belaru­sian author­i­ties in Feb­ru­ary 2023. He con­sid­ers the deci­sion to liq­ui­date BAJ “ille­gal and unjus­ti­fied,” which vio­lates the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights. The head of the BAJ Legal Cen­ter, Aleh Aheyeu, shared this with the edi­tors.

Aleh Aheyeu. Pho­to: BAJ

“We man­aged to file a com­plaint just before the Lukashen­ka regime denounced the Option­al Pro­to­col, which enables Belaru­sians to com­plain to the UN.

Accord­ing­ly, it’s a sign that the case on the liq­ui­da­tion of BAJ will be con­sid­ered by the most author­i­ta­tive body in the world that mon­i­tors the imple­men­ta­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights by states,” the lawyer said.

In 1992, Belarus rat­i­fied the Option­al Pro­to­col to the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights. How­ev­er, in Novem­ber 2022, Lukashen­ka signed a law denounc­ing this doc­u­ment, which has effec­tive­ly deprived the cit­i­zens of Belarus of the oppor­tu­ni­ty to file com­plaints to the UNHRC. BAJ was one of the last vic­tims of human rights vio­la­tions to appeal to the UNHRC.

“All deci­sions of the UNHRC must be imple­ment­ed by the author­i­ties, if not by the cur­rent ones, then by those to come. Con­se­quent­ly, this presents an oppor­tu­ni­ty for BAJ and all oth­er par­ties who have tak­en the ini­tia­tive to appeal to the UNHRC to restore their rights in the event of a change in the polit­i­cal regime. Fur­ther­more, it marks the begin­ning of the restora­tion of BAJ’s legal activ­i­ties fol­low­ing polit­i­cal changes in the coun­try. The deci­sions of the HRC are not sub­ject to a statute of lim­i­ta­tions. If the UN deems that a deci­sion has not been imple­ment­ed, it will demand that the author­i­ties do so,” Aleh Aheyeu stat­ed.

BAJ liq­ui­da­tion time­line

The BAJ pub­lic asso­ci­a­tion was estab­lished in 1995 and cur­rent­ly has over 1,300 mem­bers.

On 27 August 2021, the Supreme Court liq­ui­dat­ed BAJ.

Two search­es were con­duct­ed pri­or to this deci­sion, on Feb­ru­ary 16 and July 14, 2021. The sec­ond search was con­duct­ed by unknown indi­vid­u­als in the absence of BAJ rep­re­sen­ta­tives. They sealed the premis­es of the orga­ni­za­tion where all the doc­u­ments were locat­ed. The fol­low­ing day, July 15, the Min­istry of Jus­tice sent a writ­ten warn­ing to the orga­ni­za­tion. BAJ was effec­tive­ly unable to meet the Ministry’s require­ments, and it informed the Min­istry of Jus­tice of this. How­ev­er, on July 21, the Min­istry announced it would file a law­suit to liq­ui­date BAJ.

In Jan­u­ary 2022, Andrei Bas­tunets filed a com­plaint with the deputy chair­man of the Supreme Court about the liq­ui­da­tion of BAJ in the super­vi­so­ry pro­ce­dure. How­ev­er, on Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022, the Supreme Court dis­missed the appeal.

In his for­mal com­plaint, BAJ Chair­man Andrei Bas­tunets assert­ed that the issuance of a writ­ten warn­ing to BAJ by the Min­istry of Jus­tice, as well as the deci­sion of the Supreme Court to liq­ui­date BAJ, con­sti­tutes a vio­la­tion of his right to free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion, as guar­an­teed by Arti­cle 22 of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights.