Belarus defies UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva report

Yuval Shany, pres­i­dent of the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee

Accord­ing to Mr. Shany, there were cas­es when the gov­ern­ment refused to pro­vide infor­ma­tion request­ed by the Com­mit­tee.

Mr. Christof Heyns, for­mer Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on extra­ju­di­cial, sum­ma­ry or arbi­trary exe­cu­tions, stressed that Belarus ignored numer­ous rec­om­men­da­tions and requests by the UN body, in par­tic­u­lar inter­im mea­sures in death penal­ty cas­es.

Dur­ing the Q&A ses­sion in Gene­va, the South African expert twice asked the offi­cial del­e­ga­tion about death con­vict Ali­ak­sei Mikhale­nia, who was exe­cut­ed despite the Committee’s bid to stay exe­cu­tion. How­ev­er, this, and many oth­er ques­tions, were in fact ignored by Belarus’s envoys.

“Now we have infor­ma­tion that he was exe­cut­ed in secret. And this is an exam­ple of our coop­er­a­tion,” he said.

Viasna’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive Valiantsin Ste­fanovich, who attend­ed the 124th ses­sion of the Com­mit­tee, said that the Belaru­sian del­e­ga­tion avoid­ed answer­ing many ques­tions posed by the Com­mit­tee, argu­ing at the same time that nation­al law pre­vails over inter­na­tion­al law.

Valiantsin Ste­fanovich

“It was clear that the gov­ern­ment is not going to imple­ment many impor­tant rec­om­men­da­tions and deci­sions of the UN HRC, view­ing them as non-bind­ing and option­al. The same applies to the spe­cial pro­ce­dures of the Com­mit­tee, and many of the pro­vi­sions of the Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights, which was rat­i­fied by the State, includ­ing the Option­al Pro­to­col,” Ste­fanovich said.

Anoth­er Belaru­sian human rights defend­er Vol­ha Smalian­ka, direc­tor of the Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter, wrote in her Face­book account that the “Belaru­sian del­e­ga­tion defied the HRC. In short: our nation­al right is to have our own views on how to apply the pro­ce­dures under the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights.”

The offi­cial stance of Belarus was voiced by the country’s envoy to the UN Yury Ambraze­vich.

“We ask not to use in your state­ments “state­ment word­ing” that claim the pres­ence in the Repub­lic of Belarus of: polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, the facts of forced psy­chi­atric treat­ment, facts of pre-emp­tive arbi­trary deten­tion, evi­dence of forced labor, the use of dis­pro­por­tion­ate force dur­ing pub­lic events. It’s all rel­a­tive per­son­al eval­u­a­tion,” he said.

Yury Ambraze­vich, Belarus’s envoy to the UN

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 final­ly pre­sent­ed their report at the 124th ses­sion of the UN Human Rights Com­mit­tee from 8 to 9 Octo­ber.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Belaru­sian civ­il soci­ety pre­pared an alter­na­tive report, which pro­vides answers to the same set of ques­tions.

In their report, the HRDs out­lined key ears of con­cern in terms of Belarus’s oblig­a­tions under the Covenant, in par­tic­u­lar fail­ure to prop­er­ly inves­ti­gate cas­es of forced dis­ap­pear­ances, con­tin­ued appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty, police-relat­ed tor­ture reports, forced labor, lack of inde­pen­dence of defense lawyers, repres­sive leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the activ­i­ties of the media, NGOs and orga­ni­za­tion of peace­ful assem­blies.