Photo: “Viasna”
Since the beginning of autumn, 1,452 facts of political repression have been recorded in Belarus: detentions, searches, administrative courts, etc., the Human rights center “Viasna” reports.
From September to mid-November, at least 1,213 administrative cases were considered in the courts on the distribution, manufacture, storage, transportation of information products containing calls for extremist activities or propagandizing such activities, and on violations of the procedure for organizing and holding mass events. 488 occurred in September, 537 in October, and 188 in the first half of November.
At the same time, only 975 cases under these articles were considered during the three summer months.
According to human rights activists, more cases of persecution are recorded in the regions than in Minsk, and the “most repressive” region is Gomel — at least 337 people were convicted there on political grounds administratively (including at least 98 people in Rechitsa).
In second place in terms of the number of repressions is the Brest region, where at least 278 politically motivated trials took place. Most of the facts were recorded in Brest, residents of Baranovichi are also being tried en masse (56 cases).
People are also being tried en masse in Barysau (Minsk region), Valkavysk (Grodno region), Glybokoae, Dobrush, Zhlobin, Mazyr (Gomel region), Lepel, Navapolatsk, Orsha (Vitsebsk region), Pinsk (Brest Region).
Human rights activists state that the preventive detention of activists before an election campaign is a traditional practice of the regime, brutal repression has not stopped for a day since the beginning of the election campaign in 2020, but now the situation is only getting worse. At the same time, the real scale of persecution in Belarus may be much larger, “human rights defenders do not have all the information about repression.”
The seventh so-called presidential election is scheduled for January 26, 2025. On the day when the House of Representatives adopted the relevant decision, on October 23, Aliaksandr Lukashenka announced that he would take part in them.
