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Levon Khalatrian worked as a bar manager and was a volunteer with [opposition politician] Viktar Babaryka’s campaign in the lead-up to the presidential election on 9 August 2020. He was detained two days after the election, on 11 August 2020, and was reported to have been badly beaten at the time. He remained in pre-trial detention for 6 months.

Human Rights House Foundation joins four other international human rights organisations in urging the Belarusian authorities to withdraw the Ministry of Justice’s lawsuit to liquidate the Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC).

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.

On the first anniversary of the unprecedented crackdown on the Human Rights Center Viasna (“Viasna”) in Belarus, Human Rights House Foundation joins 22 international and Belarusian human rights organizations in launching a campaign to demand the release of seven detained Viasna members, as well as highlighting the plight of hundreds of others, who have been prosecuted and jailed solely for exercising their rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.

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.

Human Rights House Foundation joins over 50 non-governmental organisations from 18 countries in calling for Nestlé to immediately stop advertising in all state-controlled Belarusian media.