The UN Human Rights Committee found the Belarusian Government guilty of violating the right to peaceful assembly of three independent union activists of the Belarusian Radio and Electronics Workers’ Union (REP), Tamara Zaitseva, Pavel Mrochka, and Aliaksandr Abramovich. The decision was taken on July 24, 2024, in Geneva, it confirms the unlawfulness of their detention and the large fines imposed on the activists as far back as 2018.
The story began in Minsk in 2018 during the resonant trial of the REP leaders, Gennadyi Fedynich and Igor Komlik. When the verdict was pronounced, a group of union activists held an impromptu rally in front of the House of Justice, waving white-red-white flags and the flags of the REP union. 10 minutes into the rally, it was dispersed by the Special Purpose Militia Detachment, 11 activists were detained and put in a pre-trial detention facility. Eventually, the court sentenced them to large fines.
Having exhausted all legal remedies available in Belarus, the activists, together with the trade union lawyer Leanid Sudalenka, turned to the UN Human Rights Committee in 2019. Despite the duration of the case examination procedure, the decision of this UN body was an important victory: earlier, the union already managed to win similar verdicts in other cases including the case of the REP leader Gennadyi Fedynich.
“We can see the UN procedure for examining individual cases is rather long, yet, before 2020, our union actively used the international instrument to protect our members’ interests. As a result, we have about a dozen of UN HRC decisions confirming the violation of unionists’ rights to freedom of opinion and peaceful assembly”, commented the lawyer.
In the Lawyer’s opinion, the Belarusian Government now should provide a compensation to the activists, including the repayment of the fines and trial costs, and amend the national legislation to make sure that such violations cannot be repeated in the future. Besides, the UN decision should be broadly communicated within the country in all official languages.
“After the notorious events of 2020, the situation of human rights in Belarus is sad. The country rolls back to the worst practices of its Soviet past. Unions have been destroyed, their leaders and activists thrown in jail. In 2023, the Government of Belarus made an international announcement of its refusal to guarantee civil and political rights of its citizens. Nevertheless, once the Constitutional Law is restored in the country, all decisions taken at the international level will be implemented without fail”, believes Leanid Sudalenka.
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