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At least 13 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus, two weeks after the release of the former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikau.

Alena Lebiadzinskaya (right), a last year’s Minsk metro blast survivor, says she was abducted by two unidentified men in plain clothes, who injured her and took her to the police for holding up a poster reading “The government refused to help”.

Belarussian opposition politician and 2010 presidential candidate Andrei Sannikau was released from prison on Saturday.

Former political prisoner, 23-year-old Aliaksandr Malchanau (right) was found guilty of stealing scrap metal from a closed workshop of a metal stamping plant. The ex-prisoner had no other ways to make a living.

Political prisoner Siarhei Kavalenka, who has been on a hunger strike since 20 December 2011, is being force-fed. He has recently been transferred from Minsk prison to a psychiatric hospital of Vitsba-3 colony not far from his hometown Vitsebsk. Human rights defenders call upon the Belarusian authorities to stop the political persecution of Siarhei Kavalenka.

Belarusian political activist Siarhei Kavalenka (right) continues hunger strike in Minsk Republican Prison Hospital, despite his poor state of health: his weight is now about 50 kilograms. The prison hospital administration makes attempts to forcibly stop hunger strike.

The dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on torture at the Human Rights Council once again underlined that States have an obligation to combat torture and to take concrete acts to prevent ill-treatment and torture. , the Human Rights House Foundation expresses its concerns about torture in Armenia and Belarus.

Human rights defenders work to promote and protect rights of all – their work should be promoted and they should to enjoy protection in their work. However, throughout the world, they face harsh repression and often work in an unfavourable environment.

Armenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus have to rehabilitate all persons arbitrarily detained and to review and address systemic factors within their legal systems and State apparatus’ which underlie this human rights abuse; States need to stop using arbitrary detention as a repression tool.