Cichanoŭskaja commemorates Belarusian victims of enforced disappearances

August 31, Pozirk. Belarusian opposition leader Śviatłana Cichanoŭskaja commemorated political opponents of Alaksandar Łukašenka “abducted and murdered by the Belarus regime” on August 30, marking the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

Families have been denied answers for decades, she noted on X. “The regime tried to erase them. It failed. Those responsible will face justice,” the politician stressed.

The United Nations adopted the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances 20 years ago. “The anniversary puts victims and their rights to truth, justice and reparation at the center, while calling on states and other stakeholders to act to prevent enforced disappearances,” the UN said, urging for universal ratification and full implementation of the convention.

Enforced disappearances are often used to spread fear throughout society, the UN noted. The resulting sense of insecurity extends beyond the victims’ immediate families, affecting their communities and society as a whole, it added.

In Belarus, victims of enforced disappearances include former Interior Minister Juryj Zacharanka, businessman Anatol Krasoŭski and opposition politician Viktar Hančar who were abducted between May and December 1999. Cameraman Dźmitryj Zavadski has been missing since July 2000.

Their families made numerous attempts to find out their whereabouts, but investigations conducted by authorities have not answered the key question: what happened to the victims of abductions.

Authorities swept the issue under the carpet during the subsequent presidential election, in which Alaksandar Łukašenka was declared the winner.

In 2001, Christos Pourgourides, rapporteur of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, concluded after visiting Belarus that “steps were taken at the highest level of the state to actively cover up the true background of the disappearances.” Evidence suggested that “senior officials of the state may themselves be involved in these disappearances,” it said.

In 2019, media reported that exiled former elite police unit Juryj Haraŭski admitted to being a member of a government-run death squad that allegedly abducted and killed Krasoŭski and Hančar in 1999.

Although he was acquitted at a trial in Switzerland in 2023, the hearing was important in itself because Belarusian investigators have never established the fact of the murder. The Belarusian investigators admitted that the opposition figures had vanished, but said they did not know what had happened to them.

In the Haraŭski trial, the Swiss judge concluded that the ex-SOBR member might have been involved in crimes but his role remained unidentified.