In a new report, a group of independent UN experts tasked with investigating the human rights situation in Belarus found that the country has turned its judicial system into a weapon for many years, “creating a system of punishment and legal sanctions against any form of dissent, real or imagined.”
“What emerges is not a picture of isolated violations, but a system in which state institutions are systematically used to suppress dissent and fundamental freedoms,” said the group’s chair Karina Moskalenko in a statement.
“Criminal justice processes are an integral part of a broader machinery of repression,” she said, emphasizing that “their impact is felt not only by detainees, persecuted or imprisoned, but by the entire society, which is warned about the cost of dissent.”
The expert group was established by the UN Human Rights Council in April 2024 to investigate violations committed in Belarus since 2020, when the country was gripped by unprecedented anti-government demonstrations followed by brutal crackdowns.
Last year, in their first report, the experts found that some of the violations committed since then by the authoritarian government of President Alexander Lukashenko amount to crimes against humanity.
“Inhumane”
The latest report specifically examines the judicial system and documents violations at every stage of the process.
According to the experts, arrests were often “arbitrary” and “violent,” carried out by plainclothes officers without warrants, who frequently denied detainees access to legal counsel and forced them to record humiliating “confession” videos.
Later, detainees were held “in overcrowded, excessively hot and unsanitary cells, often without enough beds, infested with bedbugs, while being deprived of adequate food and sleep,” the report states.
It highlights gender-related violations, including invasive searches of detained women conducted in the presence of male guards and the deliberate refusal to provide basic menstrual hygiene products.
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The experts found that in court proceedings, especially for political opponents, journalists, and human rights activists, guarantees of the right to a fair trial were systematically violated, defendants were held in metal cages in courtrooms, and their lawyers were often removed from the bar association or detained.
Convicts detained for political reasons were marked with yellow labels and systematically subjected to “discrimination, inhumane detention conditions, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and detention without the right to contact the outside world,” the report says.
“Torture by cold”
Among other things, former detainees interviewed for the report said they were repeatedly punished for “alleged disciplinary violations,” including being held in ice-cold solitary confinement, known as “torture by cold.”
The report emphasizes that state persecution continued after release, with courts often imposing long and intrusive preventive supervision.
It was found that as a result, former prisoners experienced nighttime raids by security forces, movement restrictions, and immediate repeated detentions for minor schedule deviations.
“Release (…) cannot be mistakenly understood as the end of repression,” expert Monika Platek said in a statement.
The experts called on Belarusian authorities to immediately release all persons detained for political reasons, urgently investigate all allegations of rights violations, and hold perpetrators criminally accountable.
They also urged other countries to increase pressure on Belarus.
“The international community must not turn away,” expert Susan Bazilli said. “Those responsible for serious human rights violations must know that impunity is not a permanent shield, and victims must know that their rights have not been forgotten.”
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