The human rights scenario in Belarus: Joint Assertion to the OSCE, September 2025

I’m delivering this assertion on behalf of the next members of the Informal Group of Friends of Democratic Belarus:  Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Ukraine and my very own nation Canada.

The following taking part States are additionally becoming a member of this assertion: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Liechtenstein, Malta, Moldova, North Macedonia, San Marino, and Switzerland.

Five years in the past, following the August 2020 presidential election, the individuals of Belarus stood up for democracy, gathering peacefully to oppose a fraudulent end result that betrayed their belief and democratic aspirations.

In response, the Lukashenko regime launched a brutal and systematic crackdown on peaceable protestors.

According to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, not less than 13,500 individuals had been arrested within the six days following the announcement of the election outcomes. By May 2021, over 37,000 individuals had been arrested and detained in relation to the protests.

In the years since, the Belarusian authorities have pursued a relentless marketing campaign to close down civil society, silence unbiased media and remove any type of political opposition. Thousands have been unjustly detained, subjected to torture and ill-treatment, or pressured into exile.  The authorities have expanded and misused “anti-extremism” and “anti-terrorism” legal guidelines to punish the reputable train of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceable meeting and affiliation.

According to the Human Rights Center Viasna, not less than 8,519 individuals have confronted legal prosecution for political causes since 2020, and greater than 100,000 instances of repression have been recorded.  

As documented within the 2023 OSCE Moscow Mechanism Report and subsequent UN stories, Belarus has did not uphold its worldwide human rights obligations and its OSCE commitments, together with these associated to holding free, honest elections and the inviting of OSCE/ODIHR election observers in a well timed method.

Moreover, Belarus’s help for Russia’s struggle of aggression in opposition to Ukraine, and instrumentalization of unlawful migration, additional underscores its disregard for worldwide peace and safety, and for its OSCE commitments.

While the discharge of some hundred political prisoners since July 2024 is a welcome improvement, we stay deeply involved by the continued arrests and persecution of people for exercising their human rights.   

We are additionally conscious of those that, upon launch, have been pressured to flee Belarus or stay below continued surveillance and repression, successfully extending their punishment past imprisonment. 

When some political prisoners are launched, others are imprisoned. This infinite cycle have to be damaged.

According to Viasna, over 1,100 people stay detained for political causes.  Many are subjected to torture and ill-treatment, together with extended isolation and denial of medical care.

Nine political prisoners have already died in custody with the dying of 36-year-old Andrei Padniabenny lately reported by his mom. 

We reiterate our name for the speedy and unconditional launch of those prisoners and their efficient rehabilitation and urge the Belarusian authorities to finish their marketing campaign of repression.

Five years on, the braveness of the Belarusian individuals has not been forgotten.  We stay steadfast in our help for his or her aspirations for a free, democratic and unbiased Belarus.