"Little hope that the level of persecution will decrease." The third Barometer of Repression report has been released
The Center for New Ideas presented the third The Belarus Barometer of Repression report, which showed in figures that the pressure on Belarusian society continues to grow. Many of the figures in the report were taken from quantitative data collected by the Viasna Human Right Centre.
- Hrodna prison. Photo: spring96.org
During the presentation of the study, Viasna lawyer Pavel Sapelka spoke about the organization's work on collecting this data:
"We consider this work to be quite important. Viasna has been engaged in it for a long time, for more than a dozen years. Why is it done at all? It shows, on the one hand, the situation in society and the state, and, on the other hand, it serves another very important purpose: it is used for advocacy efforts, so that the picture of what is happening in Belarus is correct, so that the efforts, including those of human right defenders and other public actors, including political ones, were supported by fairly reliable and specific data.
We often discuss this problem: does such data collection become an alternative to human rights activities as such for us? But we understand that this is also human rights activism.
We ourselves, albeit not so often, analyze quantitative data in Viasna. We usually combine this with qualitative analysis, because those are inseparable for us. There are some situations when quantitative data can be interpreted only with an understanding of the processes that occur. For example, we recently presented a report on the application of anti-extremist legislation as a tool of repression, and there were two examples. We talked about how the quantitative indicators of holding people accountable for the dissemination of extremist materials were changing, and revealed a trend when, from several dozen of cases maximum before 2020, the authorities started to apply this article everywhere, on a daily basis, and there are already thousands of convictions for the dissemination of so-called 'extremist materials' per year, and this a daily working tool of the repressive government.
And at the same time, the second example shows that quantitative indicators and practice coincide and explain each other: extending the list of extremist materials. There was a peak at one point, when hundreds of people were added to this list in a short period of time. But this was not due to the fact that during this period the repressions somehow increased. It was just the formal expansion of this list, which for a long time seriously lagged behind the number of people convicted under so-called 'extremist' articles. And in this case, if you approach these data simply sociologically, then you might form some kind of misconception."
Henadz Korshunau, the author of the Barometer of Repression, noted that almost all quantitative data used in the report should be interpreted as the minimum possible indicators.
"It is a great shame for the state when it hides something that should not and cannot be a secret for its own citizens," Pavel Sapelka stressed. "The fact that we have to extract these numbers of convicts through our own monitoring, through some kind of our own efforts and compare, transfer, think about these numbers based on some rare official data on the number of convicts and detainees. Nevertheless, we have the courage and confidence to say that, in general, the level that we record mainly reflects the situation in the country, no matter how difficult it is for us. And I want to note that the authorities make very serious efforts not only to hide this data without giving it officially, and they are also putting serious pressure on those people who collect this data. In particular, the Viasna volunteers (those people who were present at trials and documented the cases that were heard) were seriously attacked by the authorities at one time."
As a conclusion, the following hypothesis was put forward in The Barometer of Repression: persecution of Belarusian society continues, and the pressure is expected to keep growing (at least until the end of the 2025 election campaign). Pavel Sapelka agrees with these prospects:
"Unfortunately, I have little hope the the level of persecution will decrease. Its level is more likely to change. Maybe the number of criminal convictions will reduce, only because in 2025 the statute of limitations for holding accountable under Article 342 for participation in protest actions in 2020 expires, and there is a chance this conveyor will stop. But nevertheless, there are other criminal articles that the authorities use. The use of some articles is expanding over time.
Also, speaking about the prospects, it is worth remembering that the authorities regularly report on the number of criminal cases related to extremism, and this number increases by about 5,000 every year. Authorities say that since the beginning of the 2020 presidential campaign, more than 19,000 criminal cases have already been initiated. Of course, this does not mean that there are 19,000 defendants, for various reasons: because in some criminal cases there are no defendants at all and they are unknown, in some they are known, there may be several hundred of them, in some these people are detained, and they are recognized as political prisoners by the human rights community, in some cases these people have not been detained, and therefore there is no direct correlation between the number of political prisoners, for example, and this figure, but this figure shows the groundwork for further repression. That is, they can still work on those criminal cases for a long time, look for the defendants in these cases and punish them, and this, unfortunately, is today's reality."
At the end of his speech at the presentation of The Barometer of Repression, Pavel Sapelka spoke about the plans of Viasna to collect quantitative data:
"We will continue to count, collect this data, talk about the level of repression, supporting our conclusions with the collected data, and we will be happy to provide them to everyone. I see a very good trend towards the participation of science in public activities. We will improve our tools, make them more accessible, convenient, and attractive for conducting analytical research."
