HRDs present alternative report on human rights situation in Belarus

The pre­sen­ta­tion focused on the most acute prob­lems of imple­men­ta­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights. The speak­ers were Dzmit­ry Charnykh, Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee; Vol­ha Smalian­ka, Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter; Siarhei Draz­dous­ki, Office for the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties; Valiantsin Ste­fanovich, Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na»; Siarhei Ustsin­au, Legal Ini­tia­tive; and Aleh Aheyeu, Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists.

Pre­sen­ta­tion of the alter­na­tive report on the human rights sit­u­a­tion in Belarus. Min­sk. Octo­ber 1, 2018

Belarus, as a par­ty to the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights, is oblig­ed to peri­od­i­cal­ly sub­mit reports to the UN on the imple­men­ta­tion of the Covenant. Despite this, the gov­ern­ment last report­ed more than 20 years ago. This year, the Belaru­sian author­i­ties will final­ly present such a report at the 124th ses­sion of the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee, to be held in Gene­va from 8 to 9 Octo­ber.

“For the first time in 20 years, Belarus will report to the Com­mit­tee, and the human rights orga­ni­za­tions aim to offer an alter­na­tive point of view, an alter­na­tive vision of what is hap­pen­ing in the field of human rights in Belarus,” Vol­ha Smalian­ka, direc­tor of the Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter, said.

In 2015, Belarus applied to the UN for a sim­pli­fied pro­ce­dure of the report pre­sen­ta­tion. The Human Rights Com­mit­tee, in this case, only for­mu­lates ques­tions, which are of inter­est to it. Thus, the government’s report con­tains a con­cen­trat­ed infor­ma­tion on sep­a­rate issues. Belarus pre­pared and sub­mit­ted its report to the Com­mit­tee in 2017. Human rights activists also answered the Com­mit­tee’s ques­tions, and sub­mit­ted their alter­na­tive report.

Vol­ha Smalian­ka and Valiantsin Ste­fanovich

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in Gene­va, there will be no debate, in the usu­al sense of the word, between human rights defend­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the gov­ern­ment.

“The pro­ce­dure for the con­sid­er­a­tion of reports is set up in such a way that mem­bers of the civ­il soci­ety can­not ask ques­tions about the report to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the state dur­ing its pre­sen­ta­tion, and vice ver­sa. Every­thing pass­es through the mem­bers of the Com­mit­tee. If they do not under­stand some­thing, they ask a ques­tion to the gov­ern­ment. And we only can encour­age them to ask this or that ques­tion, which we con­sid­er impor­tant. Nev­er­the­less, we believe that there will be many ques­tions, because there is a back­log of issues accu­mu­lat­ed over the 20 years,” Dzmit­ry Charnykh of the Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee said.

The authors of the report out­lined the key prob­lems in Belarus’s imple­men­ta­tion of the Covenant and rec­om­men­da­tions to the gov­ern­ment.

In par­tic­u­lar, the Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na», among oth­er top­ics, con­tributed the sec­tion on the pro­hi­bi­tion of forced labor. Valiantsin Ste­fanovich stressed that the issue of forced labor is still high­ly rel­e­vant, since stu­dents and gov­ern­ment employ­ees con­tin­ue to be sent in large quan­ti­ties to per­form agri­cul­tur­al work.

“In our report, we men­tion the things that we ear­li­er rec­om­mend­ed, but once again we have to write about them. As for med­ical-labor dis­pen­saries, we already have rec­om­men­da­tions from the Com­mit­tee on Social, Eco­nom­ic and Cul­tur­al Rights of the Inter­na­tion­al Labor Orga­ni­za­tion. Nev­er­the­less, this prac­tice con­tin­ues: every year, eight thou­sand peo­ple are sent to per­form forced labor there.

This also applies to Decree #18 regard­ing so-called oblig­at­ed per­sons (per­sons deprived of parental rights who are forced to be employed under threat of admin­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty). The report also describes the forms of forced labor, includ­ing the send­ing of employ­ees of enter­pris­es and school stu­dents to har­vest crops. In Belarus, this is done with­out their con­sent, in vio­la­tion of labor laws, includ­ing the nation­al ones,” Valiantsin Ste­fanovich said.

The human rights activists also high­light­ed the issue of the death penal­ty in Belarus.

“Cas­es of death sen­tences by the Supreme Court as the court of first instance make it impos­si­ble to appeal against the sen­tence,” Ste­fanovich said.

He also notes the non-trans­par­ent work of the Com­mis­sion on Par­dons. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pub­lic and the media may be invit­ed to its meet­ings, but all attempts of human rights defend­ers to do so have so far been unsuc­cess­ful.

The human rights activists point out that Belarus ignores its oblig­a­tions under so-called inter­im mea­sures pro­ce­dure at the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee. If the HRC receives a com­plaint from a per­son sen­tenced to death, the gov­ern­ment can­not car­ry out the sen­tence, pend­ing a deci­sion. How­ev­er, in Belarus, there are at least 10 cas­es where the death row pris­on­ers were exe­cut­ed while their com­plaints were being con­sid­ered at the Com­mit­tee.

Cur­rent­ly four peo­ple are on death row in Belarus, two of them have reg­is­tered their com­mu­ni­ca­tions at the UN HRC. Human rights activists urge the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to impose a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions as a first step towards its com­plete abo­li­tion.

See full text of the Report: Alter­na­tive report by Nation­al Human Rights Coali­tion on imple­men­ta­tion of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights in the Repub­lic of Belarus