CPJ joins calls to investigate human rights violations in Belarus

Along with other human rights organizations, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has called for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to establish an independent investigative mechanism for human rights violations in Belarus. 

On Monday, February 13, CPJ signed a letter with 27 other press freedom and human rights organizations. The letter, written by the Human Rights House Foundation of Oslo, urged UNHRC to establish such a mechanism at its subsequent meeting to ensure accountability for the human rights abuses that persisted in Belarus following the 2020 presidential election and the large-scale demonstrations. The prior UNHRC review concentrated on the immediate aftermath of the 2020 elections, but the new mechanism's mission will be broadened, according to CPJ. 

“The new mechanism should have a mandate to: document patterns of human rights violations and abuses committed in Belarus, with particular focus on those which amount to international crimes; identify those responsible; and advance much-needed future accountability. Distinct from the OHCHR examination on Belarus, whose mandate was limited to violations in the run-up to and in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, such a mechanism should have an expanded mandate to ensure a focus on more recent and ongoing serious human rights violations in Belarus, in addition to reporting on long-term, systemic human rights issues,” the letter read. 

It is worth mentioning that Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who first assumed office as president in 1994, is in charge of Belarus, a consolidated authoritarian regime. Civil rights and elections are restricted. Since 2020, when Lukashenka's rigged re-election sparked widespread unrest, the dictatorship has relied on Moscow's backing to keep control, and the nation's overall human rights situation has sharply deteriorated. Since the crackdown started, tens of thousands of people have been detained, and up to 200,000 Belarusians may have left the country. More than 5,000 criminal charges had been made as of May 2022, according to Freedom House, while the Viasna Human Rights Center, a civil society organization in Belarus, had acknowledged more than 1,200 political prisoners there, including at least 27 journalists. 

Human rights advocates draw attention to the fact that, despite falling outside the Special Rapporteur's purview, such a mechanism would offer a singular and crucial means of laying the groundwork for effective accountability for human rights violations that have increased in Belarus in the years following the 2020 election. In light of the government's active purging of the nation's human rights community, it is crucial for the victims of grave human rights crimes to receive justice, reported Viasna.