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1 [1] (December 6, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govenqj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional Res informing the IegisIathve deba Belarus: An Overview Belarus, located in eastern Europe, is a close ally of Russia. Alexander Lukashenko, an authoritarian leader, has served as president of Belarus for almost 30 years. Lukashenko has increased Belarus's dependency on Russia since 2020, when the Belarusian government launched a crackdown on political opposition and civil society that human rights monitors called unprecedented and catastrophic. Lukashenko's government has provided support to Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine, including by allowing Belarus to be used as a launchpad for the invasion in 2022. The U.S. government and the European Union (EU) have condemned Belarus's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the Lukashenko government's crackdown on dissent in Belarus, and they have imposed sanctions in response. They have called for the Belarusian government to hold free and fair presidential elections. Congress has passed legislation supporting democracy in Belarus. Pokitkal Background The Lukashenko government's 2020 crackdown followed the rise of Belarus's largest mass opposition movement since the country became independent in 1991 (Belarus previously was part of the Soviet Union). The movement arose out of protests against seemingly widespread electoral fraud in a presidential election in which opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya mounted an unexpectedly strong campaign against Lukashenko. Given Lukashenko's authoritarian rule, observers did not expect Tsikhanouskaya to win the election. However, the official pronouncement that Lukashenko won with an evidently exaggerated 80% of the vote led to protests. The brutal crackdown that followed led to larger protests that some observers characterized as leaderless and that sometimes attracted hundreds of thousands of people. More than 37,000 Belarusians were arrested or detained by May 2021, according to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), and more than 1,450 currently are political prisoners, according to Belarusian human rights monitors. A few hundred thousand people are estimated to have fled the country. Tsikhanouskaya left Belarus after being detained and threatened with imprisonment (her husband, who sought the presidency before her, was sentenced to 18 years in prison). From neighboring Lithuania, she formed a Coordination Council to help lead the opposition. Five of the Coordination Council's seven senior members still in Belarus were detained; two were sentenced to more than 10 years in prison. In 2022, Tsikhanouskaya announced the creation of the United Transitional Cabinet, a self-declared interim government in exile. In March 2023, a Belarusian court sentenced Tsikhanouskaya in absentia to 15 years in trch Se sne1914 Updated December 6, 2023 prison for allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government and other charges. Figure I. Belarus at a Glance Sources: IMF; National Statistical Committee of Belarus. Various civic activist initiatives arose in the aftermath of the 2020 crackdown. Such initiatives included collecting information on human rights violations, organizing small- scale protests, supporting tose persecuted by te government, and conducting cyberattacks against government institutions. Since Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine in 2022, some activists reportedly have sought to sabotage rail services in Belarus to hinder Russian military efforts in Ukraine. Some opposition members have become volunteer fighters in Ukraine. Belarusian authorities have tightened restrictions against the exercise of human rights and freedoms. In 2021, the government passed laws on mass gatherings, mass media, and countering extremism that criminalized a broad range of dissent and political activism. By July 2022, Belarusian authorities had opened more than 11,000 criminal cases relating to extremism, according to OHCHR. A 2023 law enables authorities to revoke citizenship for extremism and causing grave harm to the interests of the state. In 2022, the government also held a referendum, in a nondemocratic environment, to pass constitutional changes that appear aimed at securing Lukashenko's influence and personal security even if he departs from office. The Belarusian government has targeted citizens abroad. It is responsible for at least 30 incidents of direct, physical transnational repression since 2014, according to Freedom House, a nongovernmental organization. In 2021, authorities forced the landing of a commercial airliner flying from Greece to Lithuania to capture a Belarusian journalist who had facilitated 2020 post-election protests. The journalist and his companion, a Russian national, were sentenced to several years in prison but were pardoned in 2023. In 2022, authorities amended the criminal code to allow for trial in absentia against citizens abroad accused of certain crimes. In 2023, the government barred citizens abroad from obtaining or renewing passports from overseas.

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