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Marfa Rabkova is a human rights defender and a coordination of the volunteer service at the Human Rights Centre Viasna. She took part in the campaign “Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections”, which saw over 1,500 observers register for election monitoring during the 2020 presidential election. Rabkova was detained on 17 September 2020.

Maxim Znak is a lawyer who has been in detention since 18 September 2020. Shortly after his detention, he told his lawyer: “Normal life of society is impossible without law, just as human life is impossible without food”.

Volha Takarchuk runs a political vlog with almost 37,000 subscribers. She was detained several times after the August 2020 election, but on the morning of 19 May her apartment was searched, some of her belongings were seized, and she was detained. She has remained in prison since then.

Aliaksandr Vasilevich is a businessman, owner of the Vondel/Hepta advertising agency and the “Ў” Gallery, which was formerly one of the main cultural centres in Belarus. He is also the co-founder of the online media Kyky.org and TheVillage Belarus. He was detained on 28 August 2020 by representatives of the Financial Investigation Department of the State Control Committee.

In September 2020, the prominent Belarusian opposition figure Maryia Kalesnikava was abducted from Minsk and taken to the border where security forces tried to expel her from the country; she ripped up her passport in defiance. In the days that followed she was charged with incitement to undermine national security and placed in pre-trial detention. The letter that follows was written by Maryia Kalesnikava to her father on 16 July 2021, the day the Supreme Court rejected her complaint regarding the extension of her detention until 1 August.

12 квітня 2021 року білоруська влада змусила українського правозахисника Володимира Яворського залишити країну протягом 48 годин і попередила його не повертатися протягом десяти років. Його справа – ще один приклад безпрецедентного нападу на білоруське громадянське суспільство. Освітній Будинок прав людини в Чернігові (EHRHC) та HRHF поговорили з Яворським, який зараз проживає в Україні, про його допит, загрози його родині та його вислання.

On 12 April 2021, Belarusian authorities forced Ukrainian human rights defender Volodymyr Yavorskyy to leave the country within 48 hours warned him to not return within ten years. His case is another example of the unprecedented attack on Belarusian civil society. Educational Human Rights House Chernihiv (EHRHC) and HRHF spoke to Yavorskyy, now living in Ukraine, about his interrogation, the threats made against his family, and his expulsion.

“Crimes against humanity are being committed in the centre of Europe right now, in the 21st century, all because Belarusians want free and fair elections.”

Інтэрв’ю з віцебскім праваабаронцам Паўлам Левінавым.