ZMAGAR

The UN special rapporteur on Belarus, Nils Muižnieks, has written a report on women’s rights. The document is dated 14 September 2026. Its symbol is A/81/372. He will present it at the 81st session of the General Assembly. The conclusion is short: di…

Until August 2025 kvitki.by was the main service for concert and entertainment tickets in Belarus. On 26 August officers of the Department of Financial Investigations came to the office and detained a co-founder and the head of the service. In Januar…

On 14 October security officers went to the relatives of Marina Kosinerova, co-founder of the human rights initiative Dissidentby. From seven in the morning until nine at night. Some were told she had supposedly returned to Belarus. Others were told …

On 9 October 2026 a third criminal case was opened against political prisoner Tikhon Osipov under article 411, malicious disobedience to a prison administration. Former political prisoner Antonina Konovalova told the Viasna human rights centre. What …

On 14 October in Warsaw, at the OSCE Human Dimension Conference, a side event was held on the Belarusian language, culture and young people. At the table were Nobel laureate Ales Bialiatski, leader of the democratic forces Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, E…

14 October is Mother’s Day in Belarus. Dozens of children meet it without mothers held on political criminal charges. Among them are mothers of many children, mothers of children with disabilities, women taken together with their husbands, and those …

Vasily Prokhorov is 57. He was born in Chernobyl and served in the airborne troops. Viasna calls him a person who suffered in the Chernobyl accident. He was given 11 years for “treason.” His wife Larisa and his son Pavel got eight each. He began the …

On 9 October the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, “for her efforts to promote peace and international law.” From 1 September 2008 to 31 August 2014 she was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. After the Squ…

Since 20 July 2022 Belarus has had Law No. 199-Z: a criminal case can be taken to a verdict without the accused, if the person is abroad and does not appear when summoned. On 9 October Viasna wrote that this mechanism remains the main way to pursue t…

Former chief of the General Staff Pavel Muraveiko has become a deputy head of dictator Lukashenka’s Administration. On 5 October the head of the Administration, Dzmitry Krutoy, said his brief includes citizens’ appeals, including those from TikTok, T…

In September, 37-year-old Anastasia took her two children and left Brest for Lithuania. The reason was a call from the police: come in as a witness. A year earlier she had already been tried in an administrative “extremism” case. She did not want to …

After dictator Lukashenka’s talks with US presidential envoy John Coale, 25 political prisoners left the colonies on 16 September. All of them were taken to Lithuania. The same day, in one colony, more than ten others were prepared for release. They …

Dmitry Dalinnik led the investigation team on the TUT.BY case. At the end of 2022 he was himself detained for a bribe and sent to colony No. 3, Vitba. In March 2026 Zerkalo reported 14 years. On 8 October a source told the paper that was a mistake. A…

Teacher’s Day in Belarus is the first Sunday of October. In 2026 that was 4 October. On 2 October Viasna gathered kindergarten teachers, schoolteachers and lecturers who meet the holiday outside a classroom. Below is only what the centre writes about…

September under dictator Lukashenka again ran on two tracks. On 16 September US special envoy John Coale announced the release of 25 people. All of them were taken to Lithuania. On 24 September the press service announced a pardon of 15 more, 13 of t…

Twenty-six years ago, on 5 October 2000, the site TUT.BY opened. It was thought up by journalist Sergei Dmitriev, entrepreneur Yuri Zisser and several people with them. Twenty-one years later, on 18 May 2021, the site was blocked. By then the newsroo…

Vitebsk psychiatrist Igor Postnov has died in Penal Colony No. 1 in Navapolatsk. He was 58. Human rights defender Pavel Levinov reported it on social media on 4 October 2026. The cause of death was not given. According to Levinov, the body is not bei…

A Belarusian woman complained on Threads that her child’s school is pressing hard for membership in BRSM, the Belarusian Republican Youth Union, and scaring them that otherwise the child will not get into any college. She has already been called in t…

Political prisoner Mikhail Filipenko was detained in January 2026. The Minsk city court found him guilty under part 2 of article 361-3 of the Criminal Code and sentenced him to five years in prison and a fine of 500 base units. The transfers behind t…

On 29 September 2026, 879 political prisoners were still held. Detentions and trials had not stopped. Since May 2020 the number of former political prisoners has reached almost four thousand. About 900 have been pardoned, and 234 of them were expelle…

Mikalai Statkevich is a Belarusian opposition figure, a former officer and a former presidential candidate. He is described as the political prisoner who has spent more time behind bars than anyone else in the country. He became widely known after Se…

Six years ago, on 27 September 2020, Belarus was on the 50th day of protests. The count starts from the night of 9 August, when the election commission declared dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka the winner and people did not believe it. Four days before…

On 25 September Ales Bialiatski turns 64. It is his first birthday in freedom since his release on 13 December 2025. He is the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, a Belarusian human rights defender, and the founder and head of the Viasna Human Rights Ce…

On 24 September dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka signed a decree pardoning 15 convicted people. The Telegram channel Pul Pervogo reported it. The press service and BelTA published the same text. Thirteen of them had been accused of crimes of an “extrem…

Former political prisoner and volunteer of the Homiel branch of the Viasna Human Rights Centre, Sviatlana Yakubovich, has described how dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime persecuted her and her husband — political prisoner Stanislau Machalau, wh…

Hundreds gathered at Amsterdam’s NDSM shipyard to spend half an hour as the voice of people dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime tries to erase from public space. The performance A Percussion Piece — also known as “A Strike Against Silence” — turn…

An interactive dialogue with the Group of Independent Experts on the human rights situation in Belarus took place during the 63rd session of the UN Human Rights Council. Group Chair Karinna Moskalenko, with Susan Bazilli and Monika Płatek, delivered …

The United Kingdom and 37 other OSCE participating States called on the Belarusian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners and end repression against civil society, independent media and opponents of the regime.…

On 16 September, after Belarus–U.S. talks, John Coale said the United States would lift sanctions on two companies — Lakokraska and Bellesbumprom — while Belarusian authorities, as a “gesture of goodwill,” would free 25 political prisoners. The Human…

Among the political prisoners freed is Liudmila Chekina, CEO of TUT.BY. In a politically motivated case she received 12 years in a colony — for refusing to abandon her principles and doing her job honestly. Dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime tri…

U.S. presidential special envoy John Cole published the first group photo of political prisoners freed on 16 September after talks with dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka. “25 prisoners are free today! … We’re not done yet!” he wrote on X. All 25 were ta…

On 16 September, U.S. presidential special envoy John Cole announced in Minsk an “interim deal” with dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka: Belarus frees 25 prisoners, and the United States lifts sanctions on two companies — Lida-based Lakokraska and the Be…

Ahead of a possible new wave of releases expected after U.S. presidential special envoy John Cole arrives, Viasna human rights defenders remind the public of those who remain behind bars in an especially vulnerable situation. Among them are elderly p…

Since 2021, when Belarus’s Criminal Code gained Article 361-4 on “facilitating extremist activity,” courts have convicted at least 1,083 people. Among them — 252 women, according to the human rights center Viasna in a 14 September repression chronicl…

Six years ago, on 12 September 2020, Minsk’s women’s march ended at Victory Square. Here, at the stele on Independence Avenue, the columns converged — Tut.by already counted about ten thousand people. Security vans rode alongside almost the entire wa…

A Belarusian was detained three months after returning home. He was tried and sent to a colony for five years. Security forces came for 31-year-old Dzmitry Novikau in December 2025. The pretext, according to Viasna, was “two small money transfers for…

Six years ago, on 8 September 2020, dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka began publicly lying and manipulating information about Maria Kalesnikava. A day earlier Belarusian authorities tried to forcibly take her out of the country — she tore her passport a…

In Mahiliou, KGB officers came with searches to people who had recently traveled to EU countries. They checked phones and asked about contacts with representatives of the democratic forces, according to the Mahiliou team of the Viasna Human Rights Ce…

August 2026 under dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka ran on two parallel tracks: anniversary figures for six years of repression, and the daily conveyor — new political prisoners, the EHU case, fresh “extremist” lists. Pardons and diplomatic re…

Fifty-five-year-old former political prisoner and activist from Homiel Aliaksei Ramanau has been added to Russia’s Interior Ministry wanted database. The stated basis is a “criminal case,” but the card does not name a specific Criminal Code…

Six years ago, on 1 September 2020, on the first day of the academic year, instead of ceremonial assemblies more than a thousand students took to the streets of Minsk — by various estimates from about 1,500 to several thousand. University c…

Minsk authorities organized a blogger tour of Pishchalauski Castle — former Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 1, known as Volodarka. After reconstruction the complex is to open to visitors: a museum display, food venues, and nearby mass e…

Six years ago, on 30 August 2020, Minsk saw a massive March of Peace and Independence. The action coincided with dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s 66th birthday, which he marked while hiding in the Palace of Independence behind riot pol…

In summer 2026 the authorities of dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka kept regularly expanding the list of people “involved in extremist activity.” In June and July alone they added 161 names. In August, according to already published …

In Belarus under dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka, detentions and searches, administrative and criminal trials, and harsh conditions in holding centers do not stop. Political prisoners face pressure; independent media products are branded “extremi…

On 25 August 1991 the Declaration of State Sovereignty, adopted a year earlier, received the status of a constitutional law. That is the moment Belarus became independent de jure — before the Belavezha Accords. Today dictator…

A complaint against a fraudster — and the same police station hauled him back as a “political.” Silent beating in the basement, nearly four months alone, Shklov’s “slave plantation,” and expulsion from the country. Psych…

Fifty-six-year-old Aliaksandr Siezien of Vawkavysk is a political activist with almost 20 years’ experience and a group-3 disability. Back in 2014 he ran for a local council seat. In 2024 he was detained over comments about “regime accompli…

New accounts again describe harsh personal searches when Belarusians return home. A woman who often travels between Belarus and Poland told MOST that after a car check, an X-ray and a talk with KGB officers she was taken to a separate room …

Over the past six years, Belarusian civil society has undergone, under dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenka, some of its harshest changes. Almost everything shifted: the conditions for non-profits, registration, funding, relations with the state,…