Cracking down on trade unions
On April 19, 2022, law enforcement agencies raided the independent trade unions in Minsk. They conducted searches and arrests in the headquarters of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP) and offices of its affiliated unions in Minsk and in the regions, as well as in private residences of the activists.
The BKDP was founded in 1993 as a confederation and the centre of independent trade unions with 15,000 members in four affiliated unions. Three of them, the Free Trade Union, Free Metal Workers' Trade Union and Belarusian Trade Union of workers of radio and electronic industry (REP) were targeted in the crackdown.
The Belarusian KGB operated a search in the office of BKDP in Minsk and other places. The PCs, flashcards, personal documents, passports, bank cards belonging to family members, SIM cards of foreign mobile operators, union flags, digital devices, and union paperwork were seized. The exact number of people arrested is still unknown, but estimates suggest 15 people have been detained. Only one of them, the vice-president of BKDP, Siarhiej Antusievič made a phone call home on midnight, between 19-20 April and confirmed he had been kept in the KGB pretrial detention prison in Minsk. According to the Belarusian Independent Trade Union, the only trade union that has not been attacked, the president of the BKDP Alexander Yaroshuk and the accountant of the union Alena But-Gusaim are kept in the same prison. Also, the arrest of Gennady Fedynich from REP was announced, and the names of other people that were arrested on April 19 are: Nikolay Sharakh, Yana Malash, Vitaly Chichmarev, Vadim Payvin, Mikhail Gromov, Aleksander Bukhvostov, Igor Komlik, Vasiliy Bersenev, Dmitry Borodko, and Vaclau Areshka. Several activists from regional trade union cells have also been arrested in the past days.
The legal basis for the criminal charges against the unions is not clear. The search order reportedly named a criminal case under 10 different articles of Criminal Code, which have also been used in the last two years to persecute civil society and the political opposition.
Trade union added in the official list of "extremist formations"
On April 7, 2022, the state authorities announced an extrajudicial decision of KGB to define the Belarusian Trade Union of workers of radio and electronic industry (REP) as an “extremist formation”. This is the first time that an officially registered membership-based public association has been included on such a roster of “extremist formations.”
The 2021 amendments to the Criminal Code stipulate that belonging to entities in the official list of the “extremist formations” is a crime itself under article 361-1 of the Criminal Code and punishable with 6 years of imprisonment, constituting the corpus delicti regardless of the other activities of the person.
Similar to raids against CSOs in 2021
The April 19 raid on trade unions was conducted on a scale and scope similar to previous raids against civil society organisations (CSOs) on July 14, 2021. At that time, a wave of searches and arrests of figures from various CSOs were carried out all over Belarus. Those raids were followed by a wave of forced liquidations of CSOs, which made hundreds of non-commercial organisations become illegal.