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having regard to its previous resolutions on Belarus,

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having regard to the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and to all other human rights conventions to which Belarus is a party,

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having regard to the European Council conclusions of 21-22 October 2021,

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having regard to the statements by the Vice-President of the Commission / High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell of 25 March 2021 on the targeting of the Union of Poles in Belarus, of 17 January 2023 on the trials against opposition leaders and journalists and of 3 March 2023 on the sentencing of Ales Bialiatski and other Human Rights Defenders, as well as to the statement by the Spokesperson of the European External Action Service of 7 October 2022 on the court ruling against independent media representatives,

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having regard to the report of 4 March 2022 of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Belarus in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election and in its aftermath and to the statement of 6 January 2023 by the Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on trials in Belarus,

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having regard to the reports of 4 May 2022 and 20 July 2022 of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Anaïs Marin, to the UN Human Rights Council, the call by UN experts for the immediate release of jailed Nobel winner and other rights defenders in Belarus of 10 October 2022 and the comment by UN Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani on sentencing of human rights defenders in Belarus of 3 March 2023,

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having regard to the G7 Foreign Ministers’ statement of 4 November 2022 on Belarus,

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having regard to the statement by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights of 3 March 2023 on the conviction of Nobel laureate Bialiatski and other human rights defenders,

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having regard to the statements by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media, Teresa Ribeiro, of 13 July 2022 on the persistent imprisonment of journalists and media workers in Belarus, of 15 September 2022 on the continued jailing of journalists in Belarus and of 7 October 2022 on the continued persecution of Belarusian media professionals,

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having regard to Rule 132(2) and (4) of its Rules of Procedure,

A.

whereas ever since peaceful protests broke out after the massively falsified presidential election of 9 August 2020, the Lukashenka regime has been continuing its acts of repression against the people of Belarus, with civil society representatives, human rights defenders, journalists, opposition activists and many others being harassed, persecuted, arrested, tortured and convicted for expressing opposition to the regime, to the systematic human rights violations or to the regime’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine; whereas criminal prosecution remains one of the most severe forms of repression, and remains widespread;

B.

whereas as of March 2023 there were more than 1 450 people on the list the Viasna Human Rights Centre keeps of Belarusian political prisoners, including the Sakharov Prize and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski; whereas Viasna is aware of at least 2 900 people who have been convicted in politically motivated criminal cases; whereas, in 2022, Lukashenka’s regime made at least 1 200 political convictions on criminal charges and 215 print media outlets were shut down, while more than 1 000 NGOs have been liquidated in Belarus since 2020;

C.

whereas Ales Bialiatski, a prominent human rights defender, founder and chairman of the Viasna Human Rights Centre and Nobel Peace Prize and Sakharov Prize laureate, was arrested on 12 February 2022 and was held in pre-trial detention; whereas he was imprisoned between 2011 and 2014 and jailed again in 2021 in the wake of the massive pro-democracy demonstrations that followed the 2020 presidential elections; whereas, on 3 March 2023 Ales Bialiatski, Valiantsin Stefanovich, a member of the Viasna Human Rights Centre, human rights defender Zmitser Salauyou, and Uladzimir Labkovich, coordinator of the ‘Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections’ campaign, were respectively sentenced to 10, 9, 8 and 7 years of imprisonment in politically motivated trials; whereas, on 3 November 2021, Leanid Sudalenka, a lawyer from the Homieĺ branch of Viasna, and Tatsiana Lasitsa, a Viasna volunteer, were respectively sentenced to three years and two and a half years in prison;

D.

whereas Andrzej Poczobut, a journalist and a member of the Union of Poles in Belarus, was arrested on 18 March 2021, and later sentenced to three years in prison on charges of ‘publicly insulting the President of Belarus’ and ‘inciting ethnic hatred’; whereas on 8 February 2023 the Hrodna Regional Court found him guilty of encouraging actions aimed at harming the national security of the Republic of Belarus and inciting ethnic hostility, and sentenced him to eight years in prison;

E.

whereas journalists remain among those most targeted by the regime; whereas there are currently more than 30 journalists in prison in Belarus; whereas by October 2022, at least 29 independent media outlets had been designated ‘extremist’ and blocked by the authorities; whereas, according to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, public discourse is almost completely suppressed and the media are severely repressed; whereas, as a result of the total crackdown on independent media, freedom of speech no longer exists in Belarus, with total surveillance of the internet by the regime;

F.

whereas the charges against Andrzej Poczobut and Ales Bialiatski are widely considered to be politically motivated and aimed at silencing independent voices and suppressing freedom of expression and association;

G.

whereas Belarusian democratic political forces continue to be persecuted; whereas in absentia proceedings have been initiated by the Lukashenka regime against leaders of the democratic forces of Belarus and many leaders and representatives of the democratic opposition parties continue to be imprisoned in inhumane conditions; whereas on 6 March 2023 the Minsk City Court sentenced the leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition and the Head of the United Transitional Cabinet, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, to 15 years in prison in absentia; whereas the court also sentenced other members of the Coordination Council, namely Pavel Latushka, to 18 years in prison, and Maryia Maroz, Volha Kavalkova, and Siarhei Dyleuski each to 12 years in prison; whereas the sentences were pronounced days after a Belarusian court extended by 18 months the 18-year prison term of Tsikhanouskaya’s husband, the dissident and pro-democracy activist Siarhei Tsikhanouski; whereas several of those convicted are laureates of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought;

H.

whereas on 17 October 2022, in an unprecedentedly harsh sentence in a politically motivated case in Belarus, political prisoner Mikalai Autukhovich was sentenced to 25 years in a high-security penal colony, while 11 other people in this case were sentenced to prison terms of up to 20 years;

I.

whereas the authorities in Belarus have repeatedly violated the human rights of the country’s citizens, including the right to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association; whereas repression continues to affect all sectors of society; whereas the persecution of individuals continues under the guise of combating extremism and terrorism; whereas amendments to the Belarusian Criminal Code entered into force in January 2022, reintroducing criminal liability for participation in the activities of unregistered organisations; whereas in May 2022 the authorities expanded the application of capital punishment to attempted acts of terrorism, a charge previously used in trials of political activists; whereas the Belarusian regime continues to severely restrict the freedom of association; whereas, in December 2022 the Belarusian Government submitted a bill to parliament to amend the Law on Political Parties, which may ultimately lead to the de facto banning of any political party in opposition to the regime;

J.

whereas, in October 2022, Lukashenka signed into law Belarus’s withdrawal from the First Optional Protocol to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, blocking the UN Human Rights Committee’s mandate to receive and review human rights complaints from individuals in Belarus, one of the last avenues of redress for persecuted Belarusians;

K.

whereas administrative persecution is one of the instruments the Lukashenka regime uses to silence the opposition and any voices questioning the regime; whereas, in January 2023, the Viasna Human Rights Centre reported at least 350 arrests and 141 cases of politically motivated administrative persecution;

L.

whereas the persecution of independent trade unions is still ongoing; whereas the Belarusian authorities have amended legislation to broaden the scope for organisations to be categorised as ‘extremist’; whereas in July 2022, the Supreme Court of Belarus shut down four major independent trade unions and the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions; whereas in January 2023, independent trade union leaders Henadz Fiadynich and Vasil Berasneu were sentenced to nine years in prison, while Vatslau Areshka was sentenced to eight years; whereas in February 2023 the members of Rabochy Rukh (Workers’ Movement) group Siarhei Shelest, Uladzimir Zhurauka, Andrei Paheryla, Hanna Ablab, Aliaksandr Hashnikau, Siarhei Dziuba, Ihar Mints, Valiantsin Tseranevich, Siarhei Shametska and Aliaksandr Kapshul were accused of high treason and of creating and participating in an extremist organisation and were each sentenced to between 11 and 15 years in prison; whereas the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Belarus continues adding activists and leaders of the democratic trade union movement to lists of extremists and terrorists;

M.

whereas the regime has continued its acts of repression against lawyers in retaliation for expressing views on rights issues, representing clients in politically motivated cases, or for speaking out against the war in Ukraine; whereas since August 2020, at least 70 attorneys have lost their licences following arbitrary decisions by the Justice Ministry or politically motivated disbarment procedures; whereas in 2022, seven attorneys faced politically motivated criminal charges and continued to face administrative charges, detentions, searches and harassment; whereas Vital Brahinets was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment for his defence of several political prisoners including Ales Bialiatski;

N.

whereas the Lukashenka regime has taken increasingly repressive measures against the national minorities in Belarus, in particular the Polish and Lithuanian minorities, including the closure of schools teaching in the national minority languages, as well as measures against the organisations representing these minorities, such as the Union of Poles in Belarus; whereas systematic discrimination against the Polish and other national minorities has been going on for many years, with the most prominent cases of repression being those against Andżelika Borys and Andrzej Poczobut;

O.

whereas the Lukashenka regime is continuing its policy of Russification of Belarus, with the strategic aim of marginalising and destroying expressions of Belarusian national identity, including its language and culture; whereas this policy also involves banning national and historical symbols of Belarus such as the white-red-white flag and the Pahonia coat of arms, and the closure of publishing houses, private schools and Belarusian language courses;

P.

whereas the illegitimate Lukashenka regime continues to suppress the freedom of religion and belief; whereas according to the Coordination Council, several Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic and Orthodox priests and Protestant pastors have faced various forms of pressure, from fines to long terms of imprisonment, including Siarhei Rezanovich who was sentenced to 16 years’ imprisonment;

Q.

whereas political prisoners are subjected to additional repression and inhumane conditions; whereas this takes the form of holding political prisoners in conditions that are prohibited under the international obligations of Belarus, subjecting them to disciplinary penalties for bogus reasons and placing them in punishment cells; whereas political prisoners continue to report deteriorating health, humiliation and ill treatment; whereas in some cases the security level of their detention is upgraded and the term of imprisonment is arbitrarily extended, the right to correspondence is violated and political prisoners are deprived of family visits, as demonstrated by the case of Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk;

R.

whereas thousands of Belarusians have been forced or otherwise compelled to leave their homeland and seek safety abroad; whereas the Belarusian authorities continue to adopt measures restricting the rights of Belarusians living abroad; whereas ‘The Way Home’ programme, initiated by the Lukashenka regime, consists of ‘inviting’ Belarusians who had left the country in recent years to return to Belarus with the promise that they will not be persecuted provided that they make an official confession; whereas many Belarusians who have come back to their country have been arrested, persecuted and sometimes sentenced to imprisonment because they took part in protests, published comments on social media criticising the Lukashenka regime or donated to victims of the repression in Belarus; whereas, in January 2023, the Belarusian regime enacted a law that will strip citizenship from people in exile that it accuses of so-called extremism-related crimes, a list that now includes more than 2 000 individuals;

S.

whereas, more than two years on, there is no indication that the Belarusian authorities are investigating the thousands of reports of police brutality filed since the protests in August 2020 or the killings of protesters; whereas the widespread impunity for human rights violations perpetuates the desperate situation of the Belarusian people; whereas the absence of the rule of law impedes their right to a fair trial; whereas Belarus is the only country in Europe to still carry out capital punishment;

T.

whereas the Belarusian authorities often resort to surveillance, online censorship and disinformation, deploying technology to control the population; whereas these repressive practices represent another step towards digital authoritarianism and the suppression of people’s digital rights in Belarus, resulting in the escalating intimidation of citizens and the shrinking of the civic space; whereas the Lukashenka regime also employs transnational repression against Belarusian citizens living abroad;

U.

whereas the EU has imposed sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for the repression in Belarus, and has provided support to civil society and the independent media in the country;

V.

whereas the Belarusian authorities continue to support Russia’s unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine by allowing Russia to use Belarusian territory for military attacks against Ukraine; whereas scores of Belarusian citizens have been prosecuted for expressing support for Ukraine, criticising the government for supporting Russia’s war of aggression or reporting on the movements of Russian troops and military equipment within Belarus;

W.

whereas on 7 September 2022, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe invited the Secretary General of the Council of Europe to set up a Contact Group on Belarus in cooperation with representatives of Belarusian democratic forces and civil society; whereas on 1 March 2023, the official Mission of Democratic Belarus was opened in Brussels in a ceremony attended by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya;

X.

whereas in February 2023, Belarusian officials announced plans to connect to the network and later to commission the second power unit of the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) in Astravyets and to continue expanding Belarus’s nuclear capacities; whereas the construction of the Belarusian NPP took place in violation of internationally recognised technical standards and international conventions; whereas the latest intelligence reports confirm that the Belarusian authorities and Russia’s Rosatom, which was responsible for the construction of the Belarusian NPP, have consistently obscured the true situation at the Belarusian NPP and have failed to provide detailed information about the numerous incidents that have occurred there;