In 2025, Lukashenka Convicted of Political Crimes10 Times More Belarusians than He Released

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 30 – Several weeks ago, Belarusian dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka released 123 political prisoners in exchange for which the US lifted some of its sanctions on his regime, actions that attracted international attention but failed to change the repression that continues to characterize his regime.

            According to the Vyasna human rights organization, the Lukashenka regime sent “no fewer than 1254” people to prison on political charges, ten times more than the number it released in a deal with the US (rfi.fr/ru/европа/20251230-правозащитники-в-2025-году-в-беларуси-за-политику-осудили-не-менее-1254-человек).

            And as the group points out, the mass repressions in Belarus “have not ceased since 2020” and the recent release to which the international media devoted so much attention has not affected that picture in any fundamental way since more than a thousand Belarusians remain in Lukashenka’s prisons on invented political charges.

            Indeed, if anything, the situation in Belarus is getting worse because so many rights activists who gathered information on political prisoners there have either been arrested or fled the country that in many cases, there is no one to keep track of the number of those subjected to Lukashenka’s repressions.

            But it is almost certain that the Vyasna report about the number of political prisoners in Belarus will not attract the attention of the world’s media that the release of one-tenth of their number earlier in December did, yet another way in which dictatorships around the world can manipulate the image of their country abroad so easily.