UN rapporteur calls on Minsk to let him visit Belarus

January 23, Pozirk. Nils Muižnieks, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Belarus, has called on the country’s government to cooperate with his mandate.

The mandate was established in 2012 and has been renewed annually, but Minsk refuses to recognize it.

“I have asked the Belarusian authorities to invite me for a visit,” Muižnieks told reporters in Vilnius. “A condition for my visit is a meeting with political prisoners, including those held incommunicado. I very much doubt that this condition will be met, but if it is, I will go willingly. Then this visit will make sense.”

Asked by Pozirk whether he saw any way of persuading the Belarusian authorities to accept the mandate, Muižnieks said that his tools were persuasion and awareness raising but that he could not force anyone.

“One of my predecessors, Miklós Haraszti, was allowed to come to Belarus once. It was a short academic visit, I think in 2017. He came to Minsk to participate in a conference . . . Haraszti was very active in raising awareness. He said a lot and was never allowed back into Belarus.”

Muižnieks hopes for cooperation but does not expect it. “So far, we can say that the Belarusian authorities are ignoring the mandate. Although recently we have received some answers to our letters over the past year. Not to all letters. The answers often lack a lot of specific information. But sometimes the information is useful for a better understanding of the situation,” he said.

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