21 August, 2024The UN Human Rights Committee has recognized that the rights of three union activists in Belarus were violated during a protest in 2018, and is ordering the government to provide compensation and amend national legislation.
In 2018, spontaneous protests took place outside the courthouse as the verdicts of REP trade union leaders Gennady Fedynich and Ihar Komlik were announced. The protest was broken up by the police after ten minutes. Eleven activists were detained and placed in isolation and subsequently fined large sums of money by the court.
After exhausting all legal avenues in Belarus, the activists and union lawyer Leonid Sudalenka appealed to the UN Human Rights Committee in 2019.
On 24 July, the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva found the Belarusian government guilty of violating the right to hold peaceful assemblies of three of the activists; Tamara Zaitseva, Pavel Mrochko and Alexander Abramovich from Belarusian Trade Union of Workers of the Radioelectronic Industry. The detention and the heavy fines imposed in 2018 are illegal.
According to Leonid Sudalenka, the Belarusian government is now obliged to provide the activists compensation, including fines and court costs, and to amend national legislation to prevent similar violations in the future. In addition, the UN decision should be widely shared in the country’s official languages.
“The procedure for individual complaints to the UN is lengthy, nevertheless, before the events of 2020, our trade union actively used international instrument to protect the rights of its members. As a result, there are more than a dozen decisions of the UN committee on violations of trade unionists‘ rights to freedom of expression through peaceful assembly,“
says Leonid Sudalenka.
Says Kemal Özkan, IndustriALL assistant general secretary who attended the court hearing in 2018 and witnessed the protests:
“This is an important victory in a fight for freedom and justice that has been going on for far too long. It shows the resilience of the democratic trade union movement and IndustriALL will continue supporting our brothers and sisters in Belarus for as long as it is needed.”
During the International Labour Conference in Geneva in June, IndustriALL informed the international community of the catastrophic situation in Belarus.
Kemal Özkan said:
“About 40 union leaders and activists remain in jail. Their situation is very precarious. Bad health conditions, psychological pressure and various kinds of mistreatments have been reported. Independent union leaders and activists, recognized as political prisoners, must wear special yellow tags on their cloths as a sign of encouragement of abuse by the prison staff. Those who served their terms and released afterwards remain pariahs in the society. They have no right to access their previous jobs.”