EFJ calls on the UN Human Rights Council to create an accountability mechanism on Belarus

Devel­op­ments in recent weeks mark a sig­nif­i­cant esca­la­tion in Belarus. These includ­ed raids on some of the country’s most respect­ed inde­pen­dent civic organ­i­sa­tions. On 16 Feb­ru­ary 2021, the police raid­ed and searched the cen­tral office of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists (BAJ), the EFJ affil­i­ate in Belarus, and the two Min­sk offices of the Human Rights Cen­ter Vias­na, as well as Viasna’s office in Mahil­ioŭ. Police also searched the cen­tral office of the inde­pen­dent Belaru­sian Radio and Elec­tron­ic Indus­try Work­ers’ Union REP.

The author­i­ties also con­duct­ed search­es at the homes or offices of more than 40 human rights defend­ers, jour­nal­ists and their rel­a­tives in Mahil­ioŭ, Brest, Vicieb­sk, Homieĺ, Mazyr, Rečy­ca, Baranav­ičy among oth­er cities. There were reports of exces­sive use of police force against indi­vid­u­als while police seized phones, com­put­ers, mon­ey, cred­it cards and even children’s dig­i­tal tablets and mon­ey. In most of these cas­es, the raids and search­es are part of a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion in which the gov­ern­ment is false­ly equat­ing the legit­i­mate work of jour­nal­ists and human rights defend­ers with financ­ing mass dis­tur­bances.

Recent weeks have also seen the wide-rang­ing tar­get­ing of jour­nal­ists. Two jour­nal­ists, Kat­syary­na Andree­va Bakhvala­va, and Darya Chultso­va, were sen­tenced to two years in prison on 18 Feb­ru­ary for doing noth­ing more than doc­u­ment­ing peace­ful demon­stra­tions in Novem­ber. On 2 March, TUT.BY jour­nal­ist Kate­ri­na Bori­se­vich was sen­tenced to six months in prison and a fine, after she had con­tra­dict­ed offi­cial state­ments about the death of a pro­test­er, Roman Bon­darenko, who the author­i­ties sug­gest­ed was drunk at the time.

The recent report of the Unit­ed Nations High Com­mis­sion­er for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, describes “a human rights cri­sis of a mag­ni­tude unprece­dent­ed in Belarus”. “Jour­nal­ists have been rou­tine­ly detained in the con­text of the protests, even when they clear­ly iden­ti­fied them­selves as such with their press cards, with­out regard for their pro­tec­tion under inter­na­tion­al human rights law to exer­cise their func­tions of report­ing dur­ing assem­blies. Between 9 August and 20 Decem­ber, 384 jour­nal­ists were arrest­ed, 80 were sen­tenced to admin­is­tra­tive deten­tion, sev­er­al were fined, and 62 report­ed­ly expe­ri­enced vio­lence and beat­ings. Some jour­nal­ists were placed in pre­tri­al deten­tion and faced crim­i­nal charges, among them TuT.BY jour­nal­ist Kat­ya­ri­na Bari­se­vich, for alleged­ly dis­clos­ing con­fi­den­tial med­ical records while prepar­ing an arti­cle about Roman Bon­darenko. There have been numer­ous reports of the author­i­ties revok­ing the accred­i­ta­tion of jour­nal­ists, includ­ing for­eign media cor­re­spon­dents, sev­er­al of whom were arrest­ed and deport­ed from Belarus fol­low­ing the elec­tions.”

Michelle Bachelet calls on the gov­erne­ment of Belarus to “imme­di­ate­ly and uncon­di­tion­al­ly release all those unlaw­ful­ly or arbi­trar­i­ly detained for peace­ful­ly exer­cis­ing their free­doms of expres­sion, asso­ci­a­tion and peace­ful assem­bly or their legit­i­mate func­tions, includ­ing human rights defend­ers, jour­nal­ists and lawyers, and cease and reverse any admin­is­tra­tive or crim­i­nal judi­cial action against peo­ple for exer­cis­ing their human rights, includ­ing the rights to free­doms of expres­sion and peace­ful assem­bly”.

With regard to free­dom of expres­sion and opin­ion, the High Com­mis­sion­er rec­om­mends that the gov­ern­ment:

Revise the Law on Mass Media to bring it into line with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, in par­tic­u­lar by:

(i) Repeal­ing manda­to­ry accred­i­ta­tion as a pre­req­ui­site for exer­cis­ing the pro­fes­sion of jour­nal­ist of either online or offline media;

(ii) Trans­form­ing the per­mis­sion-based media reg­is­tra­tion pro­ce­dure into a sim­ple, trans­par­ent and non-dis­crim­i­na­to­ry noti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem admin­is­tered by an inde­pen­dent body;

(iii) Align­ing reg­u­la­tion and restric­tions on the Inter­net with inter­na­tion­al stan­dards, and bring­ing the restrict­ing or block­ing of web­sites under the sole author­i­ty of courts, with the nec­es­sary safe­guards and pos­si­bil­i­ty for appeal;

Ful­ly decrim­i­nal­ize defama­tion and abstain from using extrem­ism laws to repress free­dom of expres­sion.

“The inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can­not remain pas­sive in the face of the refusal of dia­logue and the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of repres­sion by Mr Lukashenko’s regime,” said EFJ Pres­i­dent Mogens Blich­er Bjer­regård. “New diplo­mat­ic weapons are need­ed to stop the con­tin­u­ing vio­la­tions of human rights and press free­dom.”

The UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Belarus, Anais Marin, con­tin­ues to be denied the oppor­tu­ni­ty to engage direct­ly with the author­i­ties or trav­el to the coun­try. His man­date remains an essen­tial mech­a­nism for long-term mon­i­tor­ing of the sit­u­a­tion in Belarus. How­ev­er, the Human Rights Coun­cil must ele­vate its response to meet the needs of the cur­rent cri­sis, par­tic­u­lar­ly to ensure account­abil­i­ty. It is there­fore essen­tial that the Human Rights Coun­cil, as the pre­mier glob­al human rights body, shows lead­er­ship to facil­i­tate a process of account­abil­i­ty through the cre­ation of a new mech­a­nism that can lead to iden­ti­fy­ing per­pe­tra­tors and hold­ing them to account. This mech­a­nism should have the fol­low­ing ele­ments:

A man­date to col­lect, pre­serve and analyse human rights vio­la­tions, and where pos­si­ble to iden­ti­fy those respon­si­ble;

A man­date to pro­vide guid­ance and rec­om­men­da­tions on access to jus­tice and account­abil­i­ty for human rights vio­la­tions;

Com­ple­men­tar­i­ty with exist­ing region­al and civ­il soci­ety-led ini­tia­tives to doc­u­ment seri­ous vio­la­tions.

The EFJ joins this demand, co-signed by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, Arti­cle 19, Barys Zvozskau Belaru­sian Human Rights House, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Cit­i­zen Par­tic­i­pa­tion, Civ­il Rights Defend­ers, FIDH – Inter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion for Human Rights, Human Rights House Foun­da­tion, Human Rights Watch, Inter­na­tion­al Bar Association’s Human Rights Insti­tute (IBAHRI), Inter­na­tion­al Com­mis­sion of Jurists (ICJ), RAZAM.CH (Swiss-Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion), World Organ­i­sa­tion Against Tor­ture (OMCT).