December 2, Pozirk. Fear, terror and persecution have forced about 300,000 Belarusians to flee their country.
“One in 30 citizens has left Belarus. They simply had no other choice. We consider all of them victims of deportation, a crime against humanity,” said Pavieł Łatuška, a Warsaw-based Belarusian opposition politician, at a side event of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Assembly in The Hague.
He called on ICC member states, especially Poland and Latvia, which have become a safe haven for many Belarusian refugees, to throw their weight behind Lithuania’s “brave referral” to the ICC, “thus strengthening efforts to ensure the accountability” of the Belarusian regime.
The Lithuanian government referred the case on Minsk’s alleged cross-border crimes against humanity to the ICC on September 30.
There are sufficient grounds to believe that the crimes have been committed against the civilian population of Belarus at the behest of high-ranking political, law enforcement and military officials since May 2020, the referral said.
Łatuška said that the regime “did not stop at expelling part of the population” and is trying to persecute Belarusians abroad. According to him, exiled Belarusians face intimidation and threats of violence, prosecution of their relatives and friends, politically motivated criminal cases and in absentia trials, as well as property confiscations.
Taken together, these and other actions “constitute a crime against humanity: extraterritorial persecution of exiled Belarusians by high-ranking regime officials,” he said. If other ICC member states joined the referral, this would contribute to the success of the case, he added.
The debate was organized by the human rights organization Redress and the M.A.R.A. human rights center in cooperation with the opposition National Anti-Crisis Management.
The event was attended by officials of the Lithuanian Ministry of Justice, members of the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus, and renowned experts on international crimes, including those who had previously worked on similar cases in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The ICC has appointed three judges to examine the referral: Iulia Motoc, Reine Alapini-Gansou and Socorro Flores Liera.
