More than 5,800 convicts: results of administrative prosecution in 2024
Last year was even more repressive for Belarus than the previous two years. The next presidential election scheduled for January 2025 has intensified the arbitrary persecution of Belarusians. Raids for solidarity, waves of mass detentions in small towns, dismissals from large enterprises for political reasons, detentions of former political prisoners and those who returned to Belarus from abroad were defining features of 2024. For the fifth year in Belarus, the Lukashenka regime continues to harass those arrested under political articles, holding them in inhuman conditions in isolation cells. People are forced to stay for weeks in overcrowded cells without hygiene products, clean linen, showers, and warm clothes, sleep on the floor, and drink dirty tap water. Some prisoners are still being held in such conditions for several months. Last year, Viasna human rights defenders recorded at least 8,895 facts of repression, much more than in 2023. Viasna reports in numbers how Belarusians were administratively persecuted in 2024, and also recalls the most repressive judges in Belarus.
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But all the figures can be much higher since human rights defenders do not get all the information about the repressions due to the intimidation of society. |
The number of persecution incidents last year
According to Viasna, at least 8,895 people faced various types of repression (detentions, interrogations, searches) last year. A quarter of the persecuted are women.
The map of repression
Minsk and the Minsk region remain the most repressive part of Belarus — 2,772 people. The Brest and Hrodna regions are next in terms of the number of repression cases — 1,925 and 1,363 people.
Administrative prosecution
According to Viasna human rights activists, in 2024, at least 5,890 trials under political administrative articles were held throughout Belarus. This is almost 2,000 more trials than in 2023.
Trials for "getting help"
In most cases, Belarusians were tried for "spreading extremist materials" (Article 19.11 of the Administrative Code). But after the massive KGB raid for solidarity in January 2024, relatives of political prisoners began to be tried under Part 2 of Article 24.15 of the Administrative Code — "the use of foreign gratuitous aid to carry out terrorist and other extremist activities or other actions prohibited by law." This article has not been used in Belarus before. At that time, the reason for the persecution was assistance to the families of political prisoners with food transfers via e-delivery from the INeedHelpBY initiative, which the authorities recognized as an "extremist formation."
Belarusians are now tried for "using foreign aid to carry out extremist activities"
As a result, more than 150 people received a heavy fine for receiving assistance through INeedHelpBY, and also had to pay compensation for the amount of the "foreign" payment.
The most repressive judges
Viasna has compiled a list of the most repressive judges in Belarus in terms of the number of administrative cases heard.
