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 them in cases the authorities call “extremist.” At the end of the month 876 political prisoners were still held. In the same month human rights defenders recognised 25 more people as political prisoners.
Thirteen fewer — and that is not a stop
In its September review, published on 5 October, Viasna still calls the situation critical. Systematic repression has not eased. It is aimed at dissenters, political opponents and anyone judged disloyal. At the end of August, 889 people were behind bars, 124 of them women. That was Viasna’s figure for the previous month, reported by Belsat and Zerkalo. By the end of September the count was 876, including 113 women. The list shortened by thirteen. At the same time twenty-five new names were added.
Viasna counts September’s pardons this way: the process touched 38 people. That is the 25 taken to Lithuania on 16 September, and 13 of those in the 24 September decree. Human rights defenders do not include the other two of those fifteen in the total. The names from the 24 September decree had still not been published by the date of the review. A pardon here is not rehabilitation. The conviction is not cleared, and the persecution is not admitted. Among those freed on 16 September were lawyer Anastasia Lazarenko, who had been sentenced to six years, and Viasna volunteer Svyatlana Yakubovich. Both were taken to Lithuania. Volunteers Vitaly Chopik and Stanislav Mochalov remain in custody.
Since July 2024, when early releases began, about 900 people have been freed ahead of term. Over the same period the list of people known to Viasna as convicted in politically motivated criminal cases grew by 3,500, and the “extremist” list by 2,700. 1,044 people were recognised as political prisoners, and another 346 after they had already been released. Since 2020 at least 10,172 people have faced politically motivated criminal prosecution, and at least 8,696 have been convicted, including in absentia. Since the start of the 2020 campaign, 4,815 people have been recognised as political prisoners, including 905 women. Former political prisoners number 3,991, of whom 792 are women. The August review on this site ended on the same split: releases for the cameras, and a conveyor that is not switched off.
One hundred and seventy who are worse off than the rest
At least 170 people are in a particularly vulnerable position because of health, age or the conditions of their detention. In August the figure was 185. Viasna writes that the number stays high, even though people from this group are sometimes pardoned or finish their terms.
Viachaslau Areshka, 71, has, according to a former political prisoner, lost his sight completely and moves around the colony by touch. Uladzimir Telepun, 70, is among those with cancer. Vasily Demidovich, 74, is constantly taken to interrogations and transfers because of new cases. Uladzimir Hundar remains imprisoned with a disability: he has no lower limb. Among women with serious illness Viasna names Aliaksandra Kasko and Irina Melkher.
Uladzimir Kniha has been held incommunicado since 5 September 2023, more than three years. Ivan Verbitsky has been held the same way since August 2023. In early September Yana Pinchuk was put in a punishment cell for 15 days. On 12 September Ales Zdarovenny was put there too. Yuri Belko is in his fifth year on a prison regime and is constantly sent to a punishment cell and a cell-type unit. A former political prisoner said Belko has severe headaches: while imprisoned he lost his four-year-old son, and he is not getting proper medical care. At least 66 political prisoners have been charged again while already behind bars. In September the new charges were against Dzmitry Rozhin and Vadim Zdarovenny.
They got out, and the pressure did not stop
For 2026 Viasna knows of six former political prisoners taken back into custody on new criminal charges: Ruslan Badamshin, Boris Vitko, Vitaly Korshun, Stanislav Mochalov, Pavel Churkin and Denis Tsybulsky. Andrei Romanov was put on a CIS interstate wanted list at the request of the Belarusian interior ministry. Uladzimir Labkovich was taken to Ukraine in December 2025. In April 2026 his passport was cancelled. In June his flat in Belarus was searched and a case was opened over his taking part in Freedom Day in Vilnius. In September a court decision arrived restricting his right to leave the country.
A former political prisoner whom Viasna does not name said the inspection called his wife at night to check whether he was at home. People in exile receive “aid” forms from a Telegram account that pretends to be a human rights group. The KGB, according to reports Viasna is recording, is trying to recruit people who have already been released, and Belarusians abroad: activists, human rights defenders, members of the Coordination Council, students of the European Humanities University. Political activist Ihar Kleshchuk, himself in forced emigration, said his mother was searched in September. In September the list of “extremist materials” added the social media accounts of former political prisoners Olga Tokarchuk, Mikola Dedok and Maksim Vinyarski, and the pages of Russian politicians Leonid Volkov and Ilya Yashin.
Lists, trials, associations
In September 82 people were added to the list of those “involved in extremist activity.” The list now holds 6,917. On 4 September alone, 52 people were added, and after 18 September the list was not updated. Viasna writes that this makes it possible to suppose the statistics are being held back on purpose. That is Viasna’s conclusion, not a proven order. The “terrorist” list held 1,470 people at the end of the month, including 719 Belarusian citizens whom the KGB added on political grounds. Sixteen people were removed. Viasna thinks this was most likely because their convictions had expired. During September the centre reported 12 sentences that include the charge of “facilitating extremist activity”: restriction of liberty or a prison colony.
Sentences passed in 2026 became known: Piotr Osipenko received 16 years, for the protests, for “insulting” dictator Lukashenka and for “treason.” Artem Merkel received seven years for preparing to organise mass riots. In the Brest “circle-dance case,” 139 people are known to have been convicted, mostly to restriction of liberty. In the Gayun case, 234. Over comments after the killing of Andrei Zeltser, 135; Oleg Konovalov remains imprisoned, and Zeltser’s widow Maria Uspenskaya was sent for forced treatment in a psychiatric hospital. In late September the Minsk regional court opened a trial of Genrikh Ageev, Yuri Vasilevsky and Ivan Balashenko. The charges include “terrorism” and “treason.”
According to Lawtrend, at the end of August the sector had lost at least 2,072 non-governmental organisations since 2020: at least 1,264 were liquidated or are being liquidated by force, and 808 closed themselves. The forced liquidation of religious organisations that missed re-registration by 5 July 2025 continues separately. At least 18 people from independent trade unions and the labour movement remain in custody. Sergei Vysotsky was sentenced to nine years in the case of the Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation. According to the Belarusian Association of Journalists, 15 media workers remain imprisoned. After the European Humanities University was labelled an “extremist organisation,” pressure on students, graduates and their relatives did not stop. Some students have been barred from leaving the country.
Torture, and a year since Podnebenny’s death
Viasna is still collecting testimony. A man called Sergei in the text described beatings and an electric shock device after his arrest. A Russian citizen called Svetlana described one protest photograph, GUBOPiK, the Akrestsina detention centre, and being dumped in a forest on the border at night and banned from the country for ten years. The names in these accounts were changed. Viktoryia Kulsha and Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk described Denis Nikonenko, a duty assistant to the head of women’s colony No. 24 in Zarechcha: violence, humiliation, fabricated violations.
On 3 September a year passed since Andrei Podnebenny, 36, a father of three, died in a punishment cell of Mogilev colony No. 15. He had been sentenced to almost 17 years. He spent exactly two years in the colony: punishment cells, provocations, beatings. The power went out, the cameras were not working, and he took his own life. Viasna collected testimony from eight former prisoners and human rights defender Valiantsin Stefanovich, and writes that this death should be seen as the result of a systematic driving of a person to suicide. The centre still knows of no criminal case against security officers for torture and deaths in political cases.
A lawyer taken from the courtroom, and a report at the UN
On 9 September the Minsk city court gave lawyer Dzmitry Laevsky three years for “facilitating extremist activity” and “discrediting” the state, and took him into custody in the courtroom. His friend and former colleague Yauhen Pylchenko told Viasna. In 2021 Laevsky had already been stripped of his licence for defending people in political cases.
On 15 September the Group of Independent Experts on Belarus published a report on how state bodies take part in violations all the way through a criminal case, from arrest to persecution after release. On 18 September the group was heard at the UN Human Rights Council. On 23 September UN experts, including the special rapporteur on Belarus, issued a joint statement on transnational repression: states must not send people to a place where persecution awaits them, and must protect those already in their jurisdiction. On 22 September a court began hearing the appeal against the acquittal of Yuri Garavsky, a former SOBR officer, in the case of the 1999 enforced disappearances of Yuri Zakharenko, Viktor Gonchar and Anatoly Krasovsky.
September ended on the same arithmetic as August. Thirty-eight people were pardoned, twenty-five received the status of political prisoner, and 876 stayed inside. Viasna’s figures are a floor: human rights defenders do not know about every case.