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Human Rights House Foundation (HRHF) and Human Rights House Tbilisi (HRHT) call on the Georgian authorities to act to protect and promote the Freedoms of Expression and Assembly in Georgia and engage substantively with human rights defenders, including Elene Khoshtaria, exercising these rights.

HRHF joins dozens of organisations in a joint letter addressed to the President of the UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador of Austria to the UN in Geneva, Director-General of the United Nations at Geneva, and all Members and Observers of the UN Human Rights Council.

Hanna Vishniak is a volunteer with Telegram channel “Drivers-97”. The channel, which has 5,000 subscribers, was initially set up to facilitate communication that would help bring people and resources where they were needed. Hanna was detained on 28 October 2020 and held in pre-trial detention in Minsk. On 4 June 2021, she was convicted of “organising and preparing activities that grossly violate public order” and sentenced to 2.5 years in prison. She was then taken to a “correctional colony” in Gomel in south-eastern Belarus.

Ihnat Sidorchyk is a film director, actor and poet. He was detained on 10 August 2020 and initially charged with “organisation of mass riots” for having called on friends to meet in central Minsk on 9 August (the day of the presidential election) via a Telegram chat. In February 2021, Ihnat was sentenced to three years of restricted freedom in an open penitentiary (so-called “khimiya”), finding him guilty of “group actions that grossly violate public order”. Ihnat was released to await an appeal hearing, but he was re-arrested in June 2021 to begin serving his sentence.

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.

The environment for human rights defenders and organisations in Russia is increasingly dire. In this report, Human Rights House Foundation outlines the impact of the sweeping crackdown and use of increasingly restrictive and repressive legislation in Russia on the work of Russian civil society domestically and internationally, providing recommendations to the international community and the Russian authorities.

Over en rekke år har vi sett at gapet mellom internasjonale standarder og nasjonal etterlevelse av menneskerettigheter blir større. Les HRHFs anbefalinger til Utenriks- og forsvarskomiteen nedenfor.

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.

Ahead of the 23rd summit between the European Union and Ukraine, Human Rights House Foundation, with its partners Educational Human Rights House Chernihiv and Human Rights House Crimea urge the EU to raise with Ukraine issues concerning freedom of expression, assembly, association and human rights defenders.