Human rights defender Leanid Sudalenka commented on a statement by propagandist Ihar Tur on the ONT television channel claiming that 196 people listed as political prisoners by the Viasna Human Rights Centre are allegedly already free.
According to Sudalenka, inaccuracies in the database arise from the conditions under which human rights defenders operate.
“We do not work with access to state databases but under conditions of complete secrecy and fear in society. When the state conceals information about trials, pardons and releases, and people fear publicity because of the threat of new reprisals, it is only natural that some information reaches us with a delay,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
“Propaganda is discussing not the scale of repression but technical inaccuracies in a database created by the human rights community under what are effectively underground conditions. Even if someone has already been released, this does not change the fact that the person was unlawfully deprived of liberty and recognised as a political prisoner,” he noted.
According to Viasna, as of June 12, 868 people in Belarus were recognised as political prisoners. Since 2020, a total of 4,655 people have received this status.
Tur previously claimed that some of the 196 individuals had been released after trial, while others had been freed through pardons, amnesties or after serving their sentences. He named several of them, including Alena Rybak, Uladzislau Fedarovich, Vadzim Saskavets and Aliaksandr Pimashenka. Videos were recorded with some of the former political prisoners who are now at liberty.
Notably, the propagandist himself offered an explanation for why human rights defenders’ lists may be inaccurate: former political prisoners are afraid to contact human rights organisations to report their release because they could then be accused of cooperating with “extremists”.
