Veteran opposition figure at risk in detention
Paval Sieviaryniec is the co-leader of the Christian Democratic Party and a vocal and long-standing critic of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. His detention on 7 June has taken place in the context of a huge and brutal crackdown on civil society and human rights ahead of the presidential election on 9 August.
In the face of unprecedented opposition mobilisation and public protests against President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, throughout Belarus, the authorities have engaged in a ruthless crackdown which has seen leading presidential candidates smeared and arrested on trumped up charges and facing lengthy terms of imprisonment if convicted.
Hundreds of their supporters, independent journalists, bloggers, online activists and bystanders have been detained during peaceful street protests and gatherings by law enforcement officers and gangs of unidentified men in plain clothes, often with the use of excessive force. Even young children are vulnerable as the authorities have threatened, on more than one occasion, to take into care the children of political activists. Hundreds of people have been arrested and fined or sentenced to “administrative detention”, and many are facing criminal charges for doing no more than peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of assembly and expression.
Amnesty International is calling on the Belarusian authorities to immediately end this escalating clampdown on human rights, to release all those who remain in detention solely for peacefully exercising their rights and bring all those responsible for human rights violations and abuses to account.
Paval Sieviaryniec was also named a prisoner of conscience in 2011, when he was sentenced to three years in a correctional facility after mass protests broke out in Belarus following the then presidential election. The crackdown on the political opposition and civil society which took place following the 2010 elections differs to the current one which is taking place months in advance of the election and in a context in which President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rating in the country is believed by many to be at an all-time low.