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POZIRK+Update on arrests, pressure on dissidents
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Łukašenka pardons 18 people, including 15 political prisoners
March 5, Pozirk. Alaksandar Łukašenka has, by his edict, granted pardon to 18 convicted individuals, including 15 people charged with extremism-related offences, according to the unofficial Telegram channel of the Belarusian ruler’s press office.
Most of those pardoned, 11, are women, Pul Pervogo said, adding that six of them have children, including children with disabilities who require constant medical rehabilitation.
Also among those pardoned are two married couples, a woman “in the final stages of pregnancy” and a person who broke the law when she was 16 years of age, the channel said.
Alaksandar Łukašenka has pardoned political prisoners on a regular basis since July 2024. Since then, he has issued at least 13 edicts granting pardon to around 350 individuals imprisoned on political charges. On September 11 and December 13, 2025, he released 51 and 123 political prisoners, respectively, as a result of talks with US special envoy John Coale. Łukašenka’s state security agencies bussed all the convicts out of Belarus.
As of March 5, human rights defenders had identified at least 1,140 political prisoners, but the real number is considerably higher because of many undocumented cases. Despite the pardons and the releases of hundreds of people upon completion of their terms, the overall number of political prisoners in Belarus does not change considerably, averaging 1,150 for many successive months. This proves that the government continues to persecute Łukašenka’s opponents.
Belarus’ security agencies label more and more opposition and civil society organizations as “extremist” groups, broadening the scale of political reprisals.
Reprisals: dissident woman on non-custodial sentence dies
March 5, Pozirk. Alena Pankova, convicted on protest-related charges, passed away. The woman, blacklisted as a “person involved in extremist activities” last September, was likely serving a non-custodial sentence, Pozirk reported. Other cases of politically-motivated persecution documented in Belarus on …
