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Belarus accuses UN Human Rights Council’s experts of seeking to “destroy Belarusian state”
Łarysa Bielskaja
September 18, Pozirk. A senior Belarusian diplomat has clashed with UN human rights experts during an interactive dialogue in Geneva on September 18 as the sides presented their opposing views on Belarus’ human rights record.
The UN Human Rights Council’s Group of Independent Experts on the Situation of Human Rights in Belarus continues to engage in falsifications and seeks to destroy the Belarusian state, Łarysa Bielskaja, Belarus’ permanent representative to the UN, charged.
The human rights situation in the country continues to deteriorate as its people face systematic and unlawful restrictions on their fundamental freedoms, retorted Karinna Moskalenko of Russia, a human rights lawyer who chairs the group.
According to Bielskaja, the group “works to undermine Belarus’ peaceful development” and to “change its political system and foreign policy.”
She described its activities as “an integral part of a large-scale repressive machine launched against the Belarusian state and people” to create the “necessary backdrop for militarization and the escalation of military political tensions at Belarus’ western borders, and serves as a tool of disinformation about the situation in the country and the government’s policies.”
The sponsors of UN Human Rights Council’s resolutions have been fighting Belarus on political and economic fronts for more than 20 years and are already rattling weapons at its borders, Bielskaja went on to say.
She dismissed the group’s reports critical of the government’s human rights record as a “deliberate attempt to discredit” Belarusian authorities and give the “air of legitimacy” to sweeping sanctions against Belarus “aimed at strangling its economic development.” “And finally, this is an attempt to distort the real choice of the people, who have supported the president’s actions and his domestic and foreign policy all these years,” she added.
In an oral update within the framework of the Council’s 63rd session, Moskalenko welcomed the release of 275 Belarusian political prisoners in March and September 2026 as a result of talks between US Special Envoy for Belarus John Coale and Alaksandar Łukašenka. At the same time, she noted that authorities continued to violate human rights by forcibly deporting many of those prisoners, with some of them deprived of their passports.
Moskalenko cited the group’s report published on September 15, which details “the involvement of Belarusian state institutions in human rights violations in the criminal justice process.”
“Human rights violations perpetrated by Belarusian State institutions throughout the criminal justice process have not been isolated or sporadic, but systematic across all stages of the process,” the report said. “Since 1 May 2020, from the initial arrest to the imposition of post release measures, members of the GUBOPiK [HUBAZiK], the police, the Department of Corrections, the KGB, the Investigative Committee, the Office of the Prosecutor General and the judiciary have acted in a coordinated and mutually reinforcing manner to implement a system of repression designed to silence any opposition to the Government.”
The Group of Independent Experts was established by the Human Rights in on April 2024 to investigate and establish the facts, circumstances and root causes of all alleged human rights violations committed in Belarus since May 1, 2020, including their gender and age dimensions and their impact on victims.
Apart from Karinna Moskalenko, the group includes Susan Bazilli of Canada, director of the International Women’s Rights Project; and Monika Stanisława Płatek of Poland, a professor of criminology at the University of Warsaw.
In March 2026, during the Council’s 61st session, the group’s mandate was extended by another year with a view to supporting accountability efforts and addressing impunity for human rights violations in Belarus. The Council requested the experts to give an oral update at the 63rd session and a comprehensive report at the 64th session in 2027.
