Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor

On 3 August 2021, a meeting with Belarusian journalist Aramayis Mirakyan took place in Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly-Vanadzor. The meeting’s discussion topic was “Civil Society in Belarus: Problems, Achievements, Developments”. 

For more than a year, repressions of civil society in Belarus have significantly increased as compared to 2010-2014. After Russian occupation of Crimea and armed conflict in Donbas, Belarusian authorities found it purposeful for Minsk to become a platform of negotiations to solve the conflict.  

With Euromaidan and further events in Ukraine, there was a surge in registration of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in Belarus, as the legislation was partly liberalized and the criminal article of “acting on behalf of non-registered organizations” was recognized invalid - numerous public figures and politicians were convicted under this article previously. 

Since August 2020, the situation in Belarus is getting more and more complicated and there are mass arrests, particularly among reporters, the press remains under the state’s immediate control, Aramayis Mirakyan, in danger of being arrested, managed to leave Belarus and find temporary shelter in Vanadzor, Armenia, “One of the reasons why I left the country is the search conducted on nearly all the organizations with which I was either cooperating or working as a volunteer. I realized that if this process reached activists, I would be inevitably imprisoned. And I decided not to wait till things go that far, because I knew that my health and physical state was not good enough for me to be in long imprisonment”. 

Since 2015, new NGOs started to be established in Belarus, and yet, communication with state bodies was difficult for them, civil activity was still very low in the country, state bodies continued interfering with NGO activities and GONGOs were being established to work with European funds. 

Having once again falsified the presindetial elections results in 2020, Alexander Lukashenko continued maintaining his authoritarian regime, this time even enhancing repressions against the society and NGOs. As a result of persecutions against non-governmental organizations, at least 57 NGOs were dissolved, many human rights activists and reporters were arrested.

A.Mirakyan also emphasized that though they continue arresting most of his friends by subjecting them to inhuman repressions, he is hopeful that the Belarusian civil society will continue fighting the long-standing dictatorial regime.