Belarus arrests families of political prisoners in KGB crackdown

CNN
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Belarus has conducted mass raids, interrogations and arrests of dozens of friends and relatives of political prisoners, a Belarusian human rights group said, in the regime’s latest crackdown on dissent.

At least 159 people were persecuted across the country on Tuesday in a “massive security raid” carried out by the Belarusian State Security Committee, referred to as the Belarusian KGB, according to Viasna Human Rights Center.

The Belarusian KGB reportedly came to the homes and workplaces of the friends and family of political prisoners, interrogating around 100 people and arresting at least 26 others. Many said they were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, Viasna said, adding some detainees’ phones were inspected before being returned with monitoring software installed.

Criminal proceedings have been opened for some of the individuals accused of “promoting extremist activities,” Viasna wrote on X Thursday.

Maryna Adamovich, the wife of political prisoner and former presidential candidate Mikalai Statkevich, was sentenced to 15 days in prison for “petty hooliganism,” the human rights group said.

Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said she was “shocked” by the raids and called on the global community “to respond decisively to this atrocity.”

Tsikhanouskaya, who was forced into exile in 2020 after President Alexander Lukashenko won a presidential election deemed by observers to be fraudulent, called Adamovich’s arrest a “stark reminder of the regime’s ruthless tactics.”

“This latest wave of repression is the regime’s revenge on those who love our country & seek a real path out of the political crisis in Belarus created by the dictator,” Tsikhanouskaya wrote Thursday on X.

The Belarusian State Security Committee did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Several European governments on Wednesday condemned the detentions. Norway’s Foreign Ministry said it was “deeply concerned by yesterday’s arrest of Maryna Adamovich, other human rights defenders and their family members.” It called for all political prisoners to be released immediately.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry called the raids “yet another escalation in a long row of human rights violations by the Belarusian authorities.”

In its annual report published earlier this month, Human Rights Watch said Belarusian authorities had carried out a “widespread and systematic crackdown on dissent” during 2023.

“Over the past year, Belarusian authorities doubled down to create an information vacuum around raging repressions by cutting political prisoners off from the outside world and bullying their lawyers and families into silence,” the group said.