TALLINN, Estonia – In a move framed as a step toward mending strained ties with Western governments, Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko has issued a pardon to 28 people imprisoned on what the regime labels “extremism” charges – offenses widely recognized as politically motivated convictions targeting dissent.
The pardon, announced Wednesday via presidential decree, was timed to coincide with Belarus’ upcoming Independence Day celebration on Friday, with the administration justifying the action on “humanitarian grounds.” The announcement marks the latest in a series of prisoner releases that have gained momentum since the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House, which have been facilitated by Washington-mediated diplomatic negotiations.
Lukashenko has held unbroken power over the 9.5 million-person nation for more than 30 years, ruling with a harsh, repressive grip that has drawn repeated waves of economic and political sanctions from Western capitals. Sanctions have been imposed both for the regime’s systematic crackdown on fundamental human rights and for its decision to allow Russia to use Belarusian territory as a staging ground for Moscow’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The most serious challenge to Lukashenko’s rule emerged after the disputed 2020 presidential election, when hundreds of thousands of Belarusians took to city streets across the country to protest what they widely viewed as a rigged vote outcome. The regime responded with a brutal, sweeping crackdown: tens of thousands of demonstrators were detained, many were beaten by security forces, leading opposition figures were either imprisoned or forced into exile.
Five years after those mass 2020 protests, Lukashenko secured a seventh consecutive term in office in an election last year that opposition groups dismissed as a completely undemocratic farce.
Under the series of U.S.-brokered agreements struck in recent months, Lukashenko has overseen the release of hundreds of political prisoners, in exchange for the lifting of a subset of U.S. sanctions. A March deal brokered by Washington saw the release of 250 detained opposition figures and activists, while the U.S. agreed to lift sanctions on two major Belarusian state-owned banks, the national Finance Ministry, and the country’s top potash producer – a key export industry for Belarus. A second deal in April facilitated a prisoner swap between Belarus and Poland that freed prominent independent journalist Andrzej Poczobut as part of a 10-person release.
Despite these incremental releases, leading Belarusian human rights organization Viasna reports that 864 political prisoners remain behind bars in the country, including 21 journalists working for independent media outlets.
Earlier this week, Nils Muižnieks, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Belarus, issued a stark warning that even with the release of hundreds of detainees over the past year, the broader human rights situation in Belarus has not seen meaningful improvement. “Sustainable progress requires an end to politically motivated repression and accountability for past violations,” Muižnieks stated in his report.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the exiled leader of Belarus’ opposition, told the Associated Press that while the latest pardon will bring momentary relief to the families of the 28 released prisoners, the international community cannot lose sight of the hundreds still detained. “We mustn’t forget that hundreds of political prisoners remain in Belarusian jails, and all of them must be released,” Tsikhanouskaya emphasized.