Belarusian Helsinki Committee Publishes Review of Public Policy Trends for May – August 2024

The Belarusian Helsinki Committee has published a review of state policy trends for May-August 2024.

You can subscribe to the newsletter “Human Rights in Belarus: The Main Trends of Public Policy”.

Previous reports were published for January-June 2023, July-December 2023 and January-April 2024.

The review highlights the most significant changes in Belarusian state policy regarding human rights and international community reactions to it in three areas:

1.General measures (legislation, strategies, policies that define the conditions and prerequisites for the implementation of human rights in the country);

2.Law enforcement practices;

3.Key decisions and reactions of international bodies related to the human rights situation in Belarus.

The latest newsletter provides an overview of trends for May-August 2024. From May to August, there was no significant surge in the legalisation of repression with qualitative changes. It is apparent that the state, having made a significant leap in such legalisation in 2023, is now "digesting" it, focusing on introducing the necessary changes to lower-level acts and expanding the range of unlawful practices, some of which will eventually be formalised, as is traditionally the case.

The formalisation of loyalty requirements to the authorities continues to extend to new professional groups (for instance, notaries). The trend of abandoning formal equality through changes in access to various professions and professional ethics rules persists, which not only results in the persecution of specific individuals but also systematically distorts the essence of these professions.

There is evidence that the state is attempting to legislatively correct the catastrophic consequences for the systematic nature of legislation and public administration caused by the arbitrary process of adopting the "passport decree". A rule has been introduced obliging the submission of information about civil status acts registered outside the Republic of Belarus to the Belarusian civil registry offices. It is clear that the prohibitions introduced by the decree inevitably created systemic inconveniences for the state itself. It cannot obtain the necessary information about its citizens. The attempt to rectify this through new changes only highlights the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of public administration and law-making. For instance, in legislation concerning identity confirmation for pension provision, a new norm has appeared: "including those previously documented with a passport of a citizen of the Republic of Belarus who refused to use it."

A large block of legislative changes concerns post-graduation work placements and the reimbursement of education costs. On the one hand, these norms further complicate the situation for certain categories of graduates who studied with budgetary funds or funds from an organisation: the rules on the placement of spouses of graduates of certain specialities and graduates assigned to rural areas are tightened, as well as the rules on reimbursement for students trained within employer-sponsored education framework.

The formalisation of ideology, including the militaristic component of education in schools, is being strengthened. Social guarantees for retirees in places of detention have been reduced. The rule on mandatory minimum pension payments has been abolished, and the list of grounds for deductions from such payments has been expanded.

The most significant change in the authorities’ policies during the second trimester of 2024 is the change in behaviour towards political prisoners. A systematic and noticeable pardon process has begun. From July to August, at least 48 persons were released. In early to mid-September, at least another 67 individuals. Thus, at the time of this analysis, at least 115 persons had been pardoned. It is worth noting the lack of transparency in the process, the fact that no pardon decrees are disclosed, and human rights defenders learn the names of the pardoned either from reports by relatives, friends, or others released, or from propagandists (interviews with some of the released are recorded for state television).

The authorities used the death penalty against a foreigner for political purposes. German citizen Rico Krieger, arrested in Belarus, was accused of six articles of the Criminal Code, including mercenarism and terrorism. This is the first case of a death sentence for actions that did not result in human casualties and also the first death sentence of a foreigner in the past 15 years (the "Human Rights Defenders Against the Death Penalty in Belarus" campaign has been monitoring death sentences since 2009).

A week after the sentence, R. Krieger was pardoned by A. Lukashenko and became part of a "major exchange" primarily involving Russian political prisoners and foreign citizens accused in Russia of espionage, exchanged for FSB officers and some other individuals between Russia, the USA, Germany, and several other countries. Notably, despite the "Krieger case" being orchestrated by the Belarusian authorities, no Belarusian political prisoner was included in the exchange list.

New practices are emerging in the application of articles on extremism. For the first time, online resources providing assistance to conscripts have been recognised as extremist. For the first time, a criminal case was initiated for reposting news from a resource recognised as extremist: forwarding the news to a public chat was qualified as assisting extremist activities under Article 361-4 of the Criminal Code.

Pressure on people who have left the state due to fear of persecution is intensifying. Pressure practices at workplaces are expanding due to travel abroad to "unfriendly countries". At state enterprises and institutions, KGB officers ("security deputies") are using various forms of pressure (it is clear there are no unified instructions, but there is a general directive for control) on people regardless of their position or type of trip (business trip/holiday). This exacerbates the comprehensiveness of control, as well as the trend towards a "Iron Curtain" reminiscent of Soviet times, a policy that we have observed since 2023, which is itself a manifestation of the Belarusian regime’s "anti-Westernism."

Among the new reactions of the international community to the human rights crisis in Belarus in the second trimester of 2024 is the re-launch of the OSCE Vienna Mechanism. The mechanism was initiated by 38 OSCE member states due to the lack of response from the Belarusian authorities to the report following the second Moscow Mechanism, presented in May 2023.