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Belarus Backsliding Badly on Human Rights: U.N. Report

by Reuters

   GENEVA --

   The Belarus government has returned to a policy of large-scale
   repression, causing a dramatic deterioration in human rights, according
   to a report published on Monday for submission to next month's session
   of the U.N. Human Rights Council.

   Last month the United States extended sanctions relief for Belarus for
   a further six months, part of an effort to engage with its veteran
   leader President Alexander Lukashenko. The European Union last year
   ended five years of sanctions against Belarus.

   The report by the Council's Special Rapporteur on Belarus, Miklos
   Haraszti, called on the international community to remain vigilant on
   human rights in Belarus.

   "The human rights situation in Belarus has seen a dramatic
   deterioration," it said.

   It said a suppression of peaceful protests in March was the severest
   crackdown since 2010, and ended a brief period where the government had
   been reticent about using force.

   "The Special Rapporteur regrets that his warnings about the dangers
   inherent in the systemic character of the entrenched oppressive laws
   have proved right," the report said.

   The crackdown in March followed protests against a law imposing a tax
   on those not in full-time employment, popularly known as the "law
   against social parasites".

   Haraszti's report said more than 900 people were detained "on
   trumped-up charges", including opposition leaders, human rights
   defenders, journalists and foreign visitors.

   "It is another instance of the cyclical pattern of the human rights
   policy of the authorities," the report said.

   "Over the past two decades, they have repeatedly returned to
   repression, following brief periods of relative liberalization, while
   leaving intact the legal order that was purposefully developed to
   suppress several basic human rights."

   Belarus also executed four people in 2016, the highest since 2008 and a
   return to the death penalty after the European Union partly lifted its
   sanctions in February 2016.