Belarusian human rights CSOs continue to monitor the numbers of political prisoners and politically motivated criminal prosecutions. The presidential election, scheduled for January 26, 2025 is expected to be unfree and criminal prosecution remains the main tool for oppression.
Despite the release of 227 political prisoners in groups of 20-30 persons in 2024 through pardons and release of a few hundreds of people after the completion of prison terms, the total number of people in custody remains over 1,200 and is decreasing only slowly.
Journalists, CSO leaders, human rights defenders, bloggers, as well as political figures and participants in peaceful assemblies were sentenced on charges including involvement in mass riots, hate speech, defamation of the president, advocating for sanctions against Belarus and extremist activities. Many of those previously convicted on politically motivated charges remain in prison, and hundreds of new cases were started in 2024.
1,245 people unjustly imprisoned as of January 2025
The Human Rights Center “Viasna,” in coalition with leading human rights CSOs, keeps records of political prisoners, in accordance with the 2013 principles of recognition of political prisoners, adopted by the Third Belarusian Human Rights Forum.
According to these criteria, the total number of political prisoners decreased only slightly to 1,245 over the course of 2024. The Human Rights Center “Viasna” reported about 1,452 political prisoners at the beginning of 2024 (but it should be noted that human rights defenders do not know about many convicted persons or they become known only after their release).
Most of these people were targeted by politically-motivated criminal prosecution in connection with the events that took place during and after the presidential election of August 2020 (and the majority were convicted years later, including in 2024). This includes the Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski and his colleagues from the Human Rights Center “Viasna,” many activists from CSOs and banned trade unions, as well as members of groups and associations the authorities have labeled as extremist formations.
Photo: Andrew Keymaster via Unsplash.
These numbers do not include the hundreds of people who were charged and fled abroad, or the who were convicted in absentia during 2024. For example, 3 human rights defenders from the regional branches of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” were convicted in absentia on criminal charges under the guise of fighting "extremist activities" outside the country, two of them sentenced to 5 years imprisonment.
Despite the fact that 227 people were pardoned during 2024 and others have completed their sentences, the total number of people in prison or pre-trial custody remains high due to new arrests and new criminal cases. At least 1,721 people were convicted in political criminal cases in Belarus in 2024 with different penalties, including 55% of them to imprisonment, others for restricted freedom with or without transfer to an open correctional facility, a fine and other types of punishments. Many of these cases are directly related to attacks against civil society, resulting in the increasing imprisonment of activists.
The most common reason for new politically-motivated criminal trials still remains connected with participation in peaceful protests after the presidential election of 2020: at least 1,019 people were convicted under Article 342 of the Criminal Code during 2024.
New legal interpretations threaten many CSOs and civic initiatives with criminal prosecution
But some of the grounds for prosecution are new and indicative of novel restrictive practices. For example, this is the case for the first criminal conviction for CSO activities without registration or after forced liquidation under Article 193-1 - the first conviction under this article was handed down in absentia in the summer of 2024.
Top executives of the outlawed Streamline language school face charges of tax evasion, the Investigative Committee’s press office reports. The Minsk city authorities launched Streamline liquidation in late October, without specifying the legal grounds or notifying the school. Streamline has operated since 1998. The essence of the charge is based on the assumption that, founded as a non-profit institution, the school evaded taxes by transferring profits to affiliated business entities.
Criminalising support: how defenders and families are repressed
For example, among such recent cases of persecution is the arrest of a well-known public figure Aliaksandr Mazur, arrested in November 2024. At the same time, the website of the initiative "letter.bel" and its pages in social networks were labelled as "extremist materials". A month later, the KGB labelled the initiative as an "extremist formation". According to the agency, Aliaksandr Mazur, as well as Pavel Karaniukhin and Aliaksandr Lykshyn are associated with "letter.bel". All three men are now in prison and charged under Article 361-1 of the Criminal Code (creation of an extremist formation or participation in it). “Letter.bel” was a service enabling electronic messages to political prisoners: a message written electronically through this service was printed out and sent to the prison in hard copy by regular mail.
At the end of January 2024, there was a massive wave of persecutions of families of political prisoners in Belarus for receiving food parcels under the initiative of IneedHelpBY, which was labelled by the authorities as an "extremist formation". At least 287 people were searched, interrogated and detained. The search warrants included criminal articles for "financing extremist activities" (Article 361-2 of the Criminal Code) and "promoting extremist activities" (Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code). To date, at least 37 people have been convicted in the criminal case of solidarity with political prisoners. According to the prosecution, the arrested individuals allegedly received the names and addresses to send a food packages or money transfers for political prisoners from the web-pages of initiatives which are labeled by the regime as "extremist formations".
Thus, a 55-year-old librarian from Brest, Iryna Pahadayeva, was detained in May 2024 and charged with "promoting extremist activities" (Parts 1 and 2 of Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code) for sending money to political prisoners in pre-trial detention centers. In total, Iryna transferred 188 BYN (around 60 EUR). In July she was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. Political prisoner Aksana Liapko, 50, was detained in January 2024 during a law enforcement raid on relatives of political prisoners for receiving food parcels from the IneedHelpBY initiative. Initially, she was accused of "financing extremist activities", but later the charge was changed to "assisting extremist activities". In September the Court sentenced Aksana to three years' imprisonment. Similarly, the mother of former political prisoner Volha Takarchuk, 64-year-old Iryna, was detained in January 2024 in connection with food parcels for the families of political prisoners. The woman was taken to the KGB for interrogation, after which she was charged under Article 361-4 (assisting extremist activities) and sentenced to 3 years' imprisonment.
The number of journalists in prison increased 1.5 times during 2024: at the beginning of 2025 there are 45 journalists in prison in Belarus.
Human rights defenders emphasise that the actual number of convictions may be much higher due to the closed nature of cases, latency of political persecution, and sanctions for communicating with human rights defenders.
Incommunicado imprisonment is a serious violation of human rights. It means that a convicted person is not allowed to correspond and be visited by relatives and a lawyer. At least seven political prisoners are currently known to be incommunicado.
2024 was marked by the deaths of 4 political prisoners whose hearts stopped behind bars. One of them, Vadzim Khrasko, a 50-year-old political prisoner died of pneumonia. He was sentenced to three years imprisonment for several donations. Since 2021, seven people have died behind bars as political prisoners.
Apart from criminal cases, Viasna reported that last year the number of people convicted under political administrative articles exceeded 5,800. This is almost 2,000 more than in 2023, and each such case means a fine or arrest for up to 15 days and detention in inhumane conditions. People are forced to spend weeks in crowded cells with no hygiene products, no clean linen or warm clothes; sleeping on the floor, drinking dirty tap water and unable to even take a shower.
This scale of oppression of civil society is incompatible with the principle of free and fair elections
A silenced civil society and an ever-present climate of fear provide the backdrop for a tightly controlled presidential election campaign.
"Preventive conversations" and repeated detentions of people active in the 2020 presidential campaign are combined with a demonstration of readiness to harshly suppress any manifestations of disloyalty in this election campaign. This climate of fear negatively affects the chances of "healthy" voter behaviour — knowing the repressive consequences of putting signatures in support of candidates other than Aliaksandr Lukashenka in 2020, voters do not want to take the risk of signing in support of anyone in 2024, says the observation mission "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" organised by the Belarusian Helsinki Committee and the Viasna.
Applications for the registration of initiative groups for the nomination of presidential candidates were submitted by 11 individuals (compared to 55 in 2020). The Central Election Commission has registered 7 initiative groups nominating presidential candidates, but only 5 of them declared they collected 100 thousand signatures, as needed for registration as a candidate. Three candidates represent loyal parties - as these are the only ones left in Belarus after the liquidation of all opposition parties due to the mandatory re-registration in 2023. Only one of the registered candidates, a non-affiliated candidate, allows herself a very careful criticism of the ruling regime, and in particular advocates in her program for the individual pardon or amnesty of political prisoners, especially those arrested after the 2020 presidential election.
Ahead of the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting, 37 participating states issued a statement on the elections in Belarus. It noted that they remain deeply concerned about the constantly deteriorating human rights situation in Belarus:
“We reiterate that the Belarusian authorities must ensure that all persons deprived of their liberty are treated with humanity and respect for their inherent dignity. […] While we recognize the pardons that have been granted since July 2024, we emphasize that the Belarusian authorities continue to arbitrarily detain many more citizens on political grounds than they have pardoned."
Some critics argue that these and previous 2024 elections in Belarus are ‘show elections’ which lack real competition, were held without participation of opposition, and allow the government and head of state to continue to claim a veneer of pseudo-democratic legitimacy, by simulating the democratic procedure.