Children's hospice at risk, director targeted

The harassment against Volha Vialichka and the targeting of the Hrodna’s children hospice that she directs comes in the context of a drastic deterioration in the human rights situation in Belarus. During the electoral campaign period and following the presidential election on 9 August, there have been mass peaceful protests including against the widely disputed official results. Throughout, the authorities have engaged in an escalating campaign against the opposition and all dissenting voices. Thousands of people have been arbitrarily arrested by police, an overwhelming majority of them peaceful protesters or bystanders, and many apprehended in abduction-style arrest by masked plain-clothed men. Amnesty has been calling for the immediate released of all those detained for exercising their right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, and an end to all other human rights violations, including the dispersal of peaceful assemblies, mass arrests and the widespread ill-treatment and torture of detainees (see: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2020/08/belarus-mounting-evidence-of-a-campaign-of-widespread-torture-of-peaceful-protesters/)