Human Rights House Foundation statement
HRC59 – Item 4 – Interactive Dialogue – SR Belarus
26 July 2025
Check against delivery.
We thank the Special Rapporteur for his compelling first report. His finding is stark: even after the pardon of political prisoners, he says that “there is no indication of an overall improvement” in civil and political rights in Belarus.
While we welcome last weekend’s limited political prisoner releases, the imprisonments should never have occurred in the first place, and conditional “pardons” cannot erase years of unjust punishment.
We therefore urge all States to withhold any rapprochement until Belarus shows systemic progress.
That must begin with unconditionally releasing the more than 1,000 remaining political prisoners, including human rights defenders such as Viasna’s Nobel-laureate Ales Bialiatski, and his colleagues Valiantsin Stefanovich, Uladzimir Labkovich and Marfa Rabkova. Their continued detention in harsh conditions remains untenable.
In addition, we call on Belarus to:
- End incommunicado detention and ill-treatment;
- Restore legal status of liquidated NGOs and allow their work;
- Repeal restrictive and repressive laws;
- And engage with the Council’s Belarus mechanisms.
Until these steps are taken, Belarus will remain, in the Rapporteur’s words, “under the shadow of repression”.
Vice-President.
We ask the Special Rapporteur, what more can the Human Rights Council do to help turn symbolic releases into systemic change in Belarus?
