The Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus has submitted new evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC) concerning crimes against humanity committed by the Lukashenka regime.
The Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus has appealed to the International Criminal Court with a statement regarding the state policy of forced exile of Belarusian citizens.
As part of the investigation into alleged crimes against humanity committed by the regime of Alexander Lukashenka, the Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus has sent a new submission to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC).
For the first time, the question is being put before the International Criminal Court as to whether the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Belarusian citizens after 2020 is merely a consequence of repression, or the result of an organized state policy of forced exile aimed at removing political opponents from Belarusian society, preventing their return to their homeland, and extending the consequences of persecution to their families and children.
In the materials provided, the Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus insists that the mass exodus of Belarusian citizens following the events of 2020 is not simply a consequence of political repression, but the result of a targeted and consistently implemented state policy of forcibly exiling political opponents of the regime and their family members from the country.
According to the authors of the submission, after the events of 2020, Belarusian authorities formed a system of interconnected repressive measures aimed not only at suppressing political dissent but also at the forced and permanent displacement of political opponents from Belarus. Mass arrests, torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, in absentia criminal proceedings and convictions, confiscation of property, restrictions on access to documents, pressure on families, measures taken against children, and the organized deportation of released political prisoners are viewed in the submission not as isolated episodes, but as elements of a unified state policy.
The authors of the submission point out that similar mechanisms have already been examined by international justice. Since the Nuremberg Trials, persecution has been understood not only as physical violence but also as the deprivation of fundamental human rights, property, and the opportunity to fully participate in the life of one's own state. In the rulings on the cases of Stakić, Krnojelac, Kupreškić, as well as Kordić and Čerkez, the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia concluded that persecution could be manifested in a combination of interconnected measures, including arrests, imprisonment, confiscation of property, restriction of rights, and exclusion of people from public life. The International Criminal Court, in the case concerning Myanmar and Bangladesh, in turn, recognized that deportation could be carried out not only through physical expulsion but also through the creation of conditions that force people to leave their country.
According to the submitted materials, in recent months, about five hundred political prisoners were delivered by state bodies directly to the borders of Belarus upon their release and effectively expelled from the country. Most of them did not receive any documents confirming the legality of their release or a change in their legal status. In the opinion of the authors of the submission, such a practice allows the state to declare at any moment that these individuals were not released, but rather illegally fled their places of detention. This means that their return to Belarus could be used as grounds for immediate arrest and new criminal prosecution. Thus, release effectively turns into a form of indefinite exile and a ban on returning to one's own country.
A separate section is devoted to the practice of criminal prosecution in absentia. The Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus notes that criminal cases and convictions in absentia are used not only as a tool to punish political opponents but also as a mechanism for legally cementing their exile, since the return of such individuals to Belarus automatically creates a risk of immediate detention and imprisonment.
Special attention is given to the confiscation of property as a tool for forced exile. According to the submitted materials, houses, apartments, bank accounts, family property, and personal belongings were confiscated from the regime's political opponents. In some cases, even items belonging to children were sold at state auctions. The submission also provides information on cases of intentional destruction and damage to the property of political opponents, with photos and videos of these acts subsequently circulated through official state resources and Ministry of Internal Affairs channels. Such actions were directed not only at causing material damage but also at publicly humiliating the families of political opponents, exerting psychological pressure on relatives in exile, and intimidating society.
Separate attention is paid to children, who have effectively become independent victims of the state's repressive policy. According to the submitted materials, thousands of children of Belarusian citizens were forced to leave the country due to the political persecution of their parents. After the cessation of most consular services, obtaining and renewing documents for many of them became practically impossible, as it requires the personal presence of parents in Belarus, where they face arrest, imprisonment, or the execution of sentences delivered in absentia.
According to the authors of the submission, the consequences of repression are purposefully extended to the children of the regime's political opponents. By losing housing, property, access to documents, and a stable legal connection with their country, many of them risk being effectively excluded from society for years and even decades to come. Thus, the policy of exile affects not only the current generation of political opponents but also their children, creating obstacles to their return to their homeland in the future.
As additional evidence, the Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus has transferred to the Office of the Prosecutor the archive of the Belarusian Women's Foundation, containing over forty hours of video interviews with women who passed through Belarusian detention centers and places of imprisonment after the 2020 events. The testimonies contain information about torture, beatings, degrading treatment, psychological and gender-based violence, threats, and other forms of cruel treatment. Unlike materials based on open-source publications, these testimonies were collected using a unified methodology for documenting human rights violations and international crimes and contain details about the identity of the witnesses, as well as the time, place, and circumstances of the alleged crimes.
The Forum of Democratic Forces of Belarus believes that the submitted materials testify to the existence in Belarus of an organized state policy of forced exile of political opponents and their family members, aimed at their permanent separation from their homeland. According to the authors of the submission, the totality of repression, forced emigration, convictions in absentia, confiscation of property, deprivation of documents, pressure on families, and the creation of obstacles to returning home—even for children—forms a unified system of deportation, persecution, and other crimes against humanity falling under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.