News on the topic: national minorities
31.03.2021 Arrested Polish minority activists are political prisoners
Joint statement of the Belarusian human rights community
26.03.2021 EU condemns attack on Polish minority leaders in Belarus
Statement by the High Representative/Vice-President Josep Borrell on targeting the Union of Poles in Belarus
14.01.2020 UN experts condemn Roma arrests in May 2019
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expressed serious concern about the mass detentions that were carried out in the Roma settlements of Mahilioŭ and other Belarusian cities in May 2019 and were accompanied by insults and physical violence by law enforcement officials.
19.09.2019 The life of the Belarusian Roma: Unvarnished truth
“It is unbelievable that people can be so poor today. Sometimes, there are no doors in the houses and the windows are shielded with cardboard. There’s no electricity, too.”
28.06.2019 FIDH and Viasna: Mass Roundups of Roma People Must Be Investigated
FIDH and its member organization in Belarus, the Viasna Human Rights Centre, urge the Belarusian authorities to immediately put an end to all violence and persecution against the Roma community and to launch an independent and impartial investigation into the human rights abuses that took place in Mogilev, where 300 people were arbitrarily arrested, including 100 detained last month in raids which specifically targeted this minority ethnic group.
26.06.2019 Prosecutor General’s Office blind to police abuse in Mahilioŭ Roma raids
A working group created to investigate reports of police brutality during a major raid on Roma houses in Mahilioŭ and several other cities on May 16 found no “illegal actions or abuse of power,” Deputy Prosecutor General Aliaksei Stuk said at a press conference on June 25.
17.05.2019 Human rights defenders: Crime has no nationality
On May 16, police officers raided dozens of Roma houses in Mahilioŭ, after a local road policeman, Yauhen Patapovich, was abducted and murdered outside the city.
11.12.2017 UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination publishes findings on Belarus
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has published its findings on the countries it examined during its latest session from 20 November to 8 December. These include Belarus, which last reported to the Committee in 2013.
06.11.2017 Report on violations of Roma rights in Belarus sent to UN
Human rights activists have submitted to the UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination an alternative report on the implementation by the Republic of Belarus of the corresponding UN Convention. The report's authors concluded that the Roma in Belarus are subject to discrimination, particularly in employment, resulting in exclusion, extreme poverty, criminalization of the country’s Roma population.
29.09.2016 Andrei Paluda: “2 of 16 death convicts in Belarus are Roma”
Andrei Paluda, coordinator of the campaign Human Rights Defenders against the Death Penalty in Belarus, took part in the working session “Tolerance and non-discrimination, including Roma and Sinti issues, including implementation of the OSCE Action Plan on Improving the Situation of Roma and Sinti” held yesterday in Warsaw as part of the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting.
15.05.2015 Prosecutor General's Office answers Tatsiana Reviaka concerning "normalization" of Jews by Lukashenka
Officials of the prosecution believe that the arguments of Tatsiana Reviaka are "disputable". The activist will seek an answer on the merits.
30.04.2015 Activists ask Prosecutor General's Office to give legal assessment of Lukashenka's remarks
Human rights defender Tatsiana Raviaka sent an electronic appeal to the Prosecutor General's Office of Belarus, asking to assess Lukashenka's order to “take all Jews under control”.
02.04.2015 Police again scare residents of Homel region with Romany
Human rights defenders Maryia Klimovich and Ales Yauseyenka have repeatedly raised the problem of discrimination against Roma in the media, where they are often referred to as potential criminals and citizens are warned against contacts with them.
12.03.2015 Anzhalika Borys subjected to prophylactic supervision
She is suspected of acting on behalf of an unregistered organization.She was informed by it by an investigator of the Financial Investigations Department of the Committee of State Control in the Hrodna region.
26.02.2015 Human rights defenders receive more reports on ongoing harassment of Roma
The Human Rights Center "Viasna" has received a complaint from a group of citizens representing the Roma diaspora in Minsk. According to them, they are facing unreasonable and arbitrary detentions by the law enforcement bodies.
