We, representatives of the human rights community of Belarus, note with growing anxiety the continuation of unprecedented repressions against members of the national civil society.<\/p>\n
On August 11, former Belarusian ambassador to Slovakia Ihar Liashchenia<\/strong> was arrested and placed in a temporary detention center. After the undemocratic presidential election of August 2020, he condemned violence against the Belarusian people and protesters, and later took part in a series of political initiatives.<\/p>\n We are convinced that the true motive for his imprisonment is his non-violent activities to promote democratic values, as well as the lawful exercise of freedoms of opinion and expression.<\/p>\n Based on this, we consider his persecution and imprisonment<\/strong> to be politically motivated<\/strong>, as they are related to his non-violent activities aimed at protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms. Ihar Liashchenia<\/strong> is therefore a political prisoner<\/strong> in accordance with paragraph 3.1 of the Guidelines on the Definition of Political Prisoners<\/a>.<\/p>\n We call on the Belarusian authorities to release Ihar Liashchenia immediately and to stop his criminal prosecution. We also call to stop repression and to release all political prisoners.<\/strong><\/p>\n Human Rights Center “Viasna”<\/em><\/p>\n Legal Initiative<\/em><\/p>\n Lawtrend<\/em><\/p>\n Barys Zvozskau Belarusian Human Rights House<\/em><\/p>\n Belarusian Association of Journalists<\/em><\/p>\n PEN Belarus<\/em><\/p>\n Belarusian Helsinki Committee<\/em><\/p>\n Belarusian Documentation Center<\/em><\/p>\n Identity and Law<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Joint statement of Belarusian human rights organizations<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":8308,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1,4093],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-statement","category-news","category-creative-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8307"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8310,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8307\/revisions\/8310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/penbelarus.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}