Four years of arbitrary detention – the crackdown on Viasna members must end

Four years have now passed since the arbitrary detention of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Viasna Chairperson Ales Bialiatski, FIDH Vice-President Valiantsin Stefanovic, and Viasna lawyer Uladzimir Labkovich on 14 July 2021 in an unprecedented raid against Belarusian civil society. Convicted on fabricated and politically motivated charges, they were respectively sentenced to ten, nine and seven years of imprisonment on 3 March 2023. They remain arbitrarily imprisoned at the time of this publication and are consistently subjected to harsh conditions and ill-treatment. In particular, Ales Bialiatski’s situation is deeply alarming: correspondence with his family is unstable—his wife last received a letter from him in December 2024, and it is likely that her letters have not reached him. There is also no evidence that he is receiving adequate or timely medical care for his chronic diseases, raising serious concerns that his health is worsening due to the conditions of his imprisonment.

The severe repression against Human Right Center Viasna—one of the leading Belarusian human rights organisations that has long been at the forefront of the Belarusian human rights movement—which currently has four of its members behind bars, remains deeply concerning. The reprisals against the organisation and its members are part of a broader crackdown on civil society in Belarus, especially following the mass protests against the falsified 2020 Presidential elections. In the aftermath of the protests, the authorities shut down all human rights and other independent organisations, leaving not one legally operating human rights NGO in the country.

Marfa Rabkova sentenced to almost 15 years in prison

As of 2 July 2025, 1,164 individuals remain arbitrarily detained in Belarus for political reasons, among them Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovic, Uladzimir Labkovich, as well as Marfa Rabkova, sentenced to almost 15 years in prison, and Nasta Loika, co-founder of Human Constanta, who is serving a seven years sentence. All of them were subjected to acts of harassment, ill-treatment and/or torture, and denied access to legal counsel. According to the SOS-Defenders platform, at least 38 media workers, 6 lawyers and 27 trade unionists are also currently arbitrarily detained. The signatories urge the Belarusian authorities to guarantee in all circumstances the physical integrity and psychological well-being of Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovic, Uladzimir Labkovich and Marfa Rabkova, as well as all other arbitrarily detained human rights defenders, and to immediately and unconditionally release them.

The signatories denounce the ongoing repression in Belarus, stressing that the politically motivated, arbitrary harassment and ill-treatment of human rights defenders in Belarus must end. They further call for international accountability and an immediate cessation of all forms of politically motivated persecution—including escalating transnational repression—targeting  Belarusian human rights defenders and civil society as a whole, whether in Belarus or abroad.

The signatories finally call on the authorities in Belarus to ensure that human rights defenders can carry out their legitimate activities without fear of reprisals and free of all restrictions or being forced to exile.

Signatories:

• ADC Memorial
• Anaïs Marin, former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus (2018–2024)
• ARTICLE 19
• Belarusian Association of Journalists
• Belarusian Helsinki Committee
• Center for Civil Liberties, Ukraine
• Citizens’ Watch
• Civil Society Institute, Armenia
• Europäischer Austausch gGmbH
• European Platform for Democratic Elections
• Expert Forum
• FIDH (International Federation for Human Rights), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
• Front Line Defenders
• Helsinki Citizens Assembly- Vanadzor
• Human Rights Center, Georgia
• Human Rights Center Viasna
• Human Rights House Foundation
• Human Rights Movement Bir Duino-Kyrgyzstan
• Human Rights Watch
• ILI Foundation, Kazakhstan
• Institute for Public Environment Development
• International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI)
• International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED)
• Kazakhstan International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of law (KIBHR)
• Lawtrend
• Legal Initiative
• LIBERECO – Partnership for Human Rights
• Memorial Human Rights Defense Center
• Memo98
• Netherlands Helsinki Committee
• Norwegian Helsinki Committee
• Östgruppen
• OMCT (World Organisation Against Torture), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
• PEN Belarus
• People In Need
• Political Accountability Foundation
• Promo-LEX
• REDRESS
• Respect-Protect-Fulfill
• Right Livelihood
• Transparency International Anticorruption Center Armenia
• Unhack Democracy