Zhanna Litvina and Ales Bialiatski meet with EU representatives in Brussels

Belaru­sian human rights defend­ers said that the release of six polit­i­cal pris­on­ers in August 2015 was not fol­lowed by any oth­er pos­i­tive devel­op­ments in the field of human rights and democ­ra­cy, while the pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Octo­ber 2015 was marred by gross vio­la­tions and fal­si­fi­ca­tions.

So far, the country’s author­i­ties have failed to reply to an open let­ter by the Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions of Decem­ber 2015, which called to imme­di­ate­ly launch demo­c­ra­t­ic reforms and put an end to the polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion of civ­il soci­ety and polit­i­cal activists, to allow the reg­is­tra­tion of black­list­ed NGOs and polit­i­cal par­ties with­out polit­i­cal cen­sor­ship, to cre­ate safe con­di­tions for the return of polit­i­cal refugees to the coun­try, to stop the per­se­cu­tion of inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists and demo­c­ra­t­ic media, and to intro­duce a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty.

More­over, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il soci­ety and jour­nal­ists con­tin­ue to be sub­ject­ed to harass­ment, courts still hand down death sen­tences, and non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions face repeat­ed denials of reg­is­tra­tion. Human rights activists point­ed out that the prob­lems with human rights and demo­c­ra­t­ic free­doms in Belarus are of sys­temic nature.

Guid­ed by the con­cert­ed posi­tion of the Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions, Ales Biali­ats­ki and Zhan­na Litv­ina sug­gest that the lev­el of mon­i­tor­ing the human rights sit­u­a­tion in Belarus should not be reduced and con­stant polit­i­cal pres­sure on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties be pre­served in order to expand the country’s demo­c­ra­t­ic com­mu­ni­ty. The activists called on the Euro­pean Union to announce a list of pri­or­i­ty mea­sures that the Belaru­sian author­i­ties are expect­ed to take, and to agree on a ‘road map’ for demo­c­ra­t­ic changes in the coun­try.

The vis­it takes place on the eve of a sched­uled deci­sion on EU sanc­tions against Belaru­sian offi­cials respon­si­ble for human rights vio­la­tions and elec­toral fraud. The sanc­tions were sus­pend­ed for four months at the end of Octo­ber 2015. The ques­tion will be dis­cussed by the EU Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions on Feb­ru­ary 15.