News on the topic: discrimination
07.10.2020 "A paramedic came and started beating people." Survivor stories
18-year-old Illia was detained on August 11 near Pushkinskaya metro station when he was driving to his native city. He told Viasna how inhumanely he was treated and beaten in the police department and in the detention center in Akrescin Street.
17.07.2020 Amnesty International: Misogyny and discrimination fuels vicious campaign against activists ahead of election
The Belarusian authorities must halt their crackdown on all dissent ahead of the presidential election on 9 August, and immediately end their vicious campaign of targeting women activists and family members of political opposition representatives using tactics fueled by misogyny, Amnesty International said today.
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.
26.11.2019 Orange the World to End Violence against Women
November 25 was marked as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Viasna talked to Belarusian activists working with gender issues to ask them about ways of addressing problems of violence against women in Belarus.
09.10.2019 Violence, sexism, employment discrimination: women’s rights groups send report to UN
The “Her Rights” center has prepared, in a coalition with the public association “Radzislava”, a report on the state of gender equality and women’s rights in Belarus in the framework of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The survey is an alternative to the government’s report, both of which will be heard in May 2020.
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.
27.05.2019 How Belarus fails its homeless
Belarus is the host of next month’s European Games. This is bad news for the country’s many homeless. Already facing a hostile bureaucracy and lacking decent shelters, the homeless will be targeted for ‘street cleaning’ by the authorities.
26.04.2019 “Learning to see the homeless as human beings”: HRDs present report on homeless people in Belarus
The Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Human Constanta and the Partnership for Human Rights Libereco presented a joint report “Homeless People and the Right to Housing in Belarus” and an online resource about the problems of people without a home.
06.08.2018 Viasna asks UN Special Rapporteur to intercede for LGBT activist Vika Biran
The Human Rights Center "Viasna" has written to Mr. David Kaye, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, asking him to intervene in the case of LGBTQ+ activist Vika Biran, who was convicted for publicly expressing her civil position towards a homophobic article posted on the official website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
24.07.2018 LGBT people subject to illegal police profiling
Last Friday night, July 21, police broke into an LGBT club in Minsk, Burlesque. Earlier, the place was raided on June 29. In both incidents, the guests were not arrested. But the visitors’ IDs were checked and the police asked them about their current employers.
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.
04.12.2017 UN experts set uncomfortable questions in Belarus anti-discrimination report
The lack of anti-discrimination legislation, the absence of an ombudsman, the problem with the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession, the presence of the President's decree on social dependency, lack of cooperation between the government and the civil society — these and other concerns, which characterize the overall situation of human rights in the country, were raised before the official delegation of Belarus during the consideration of the country’s report in the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
29.11.2017 UN CERD to hear alternative reports on Belarus
On November 30, the 94th session of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is expected to consider the report of the Belarusian government on the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Belarusian human rights defenders will present alternative reports to the Committee.
