Latest

Human Rights House Foundation and 17 other international and Belarusian organizations call on Belarusian authorities to immediately annul the outrageous verdict and drop all charges against Leanid Sudalenka and Tatsiana Lasitsa, sentenced today to 3 and 2.5 years in prison, as well as five other members of Viasna who are currently in jail on politically motivated charges.

Danila Hancharou is a lighting designer who had previously been employed at the New Drama Theater in Minsk. On 15 March, his apartment was searched, and he was detained for having held a one-person picket. Having been sentenced to 15 days in prison, he was due to be released on 30 March. But on 26 March, he was taken for interrogation and charged with the “organisation and preparation of actions that grossly violate public order.” He was subsequently transferred to a pre-trial detention centre. On 9 July 2021, he was put on trial and sentenced to two years in prison. He remains imprisoned in “correctional facility” #17 (IK-17) in Shklow in the Mogliev region of Belarus.

Watch the full recording of the webinar “Censoring Civil Society: The impact of restrictive civil society legislation on engagement with the UN”, hosted on the sidelines of the 48th session of the Human Rights Council on 30 September 2021.

Elena Talkacheva is a journalist and was a business reporter for the independent news website, Tut.by. She was detained alongside 14 of her colleagues on 18 May 2021 in the framework of a criminal case initiated against Tut.by for tax evasion.

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.

On 29 September 2021, Human Rights House Foundation delivered a statement at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council on reprisals against civil soceity.

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).

On 24 September 2021, Human Rights House Foundation delivered a statement at the 48th session of the Human Rights Council on the human rights situation in Belarus.

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.