Lukashenko usurped power. The regime's crimes demand accountability
An editorial on three decades of concentrated power, the disappearances of opponents, the crushing of protests and continuing repression.
We call Alexander Lukashenko a dictator and a usurper. This is a political judgment about a system in which power has remained in one man's hands for decades and the prospect of a peaceful change of leader has been dismantled. The 1996 constitutional crisis and expansion of presidential powers were a turning point. In 2025 the authorities again failed to invite OSCE observers in time, preventing an independent assessment of the presidential election. A state that closes its elections to scrutiny cannot demand blind trust in the announced result.
There are human lives behind that history. Yury Zakharanka, Viktar Hanchar, Anatol Krasouski and Dzmitry Zavadski disappeared in 1999–2000. PACE pointed to failed investigations and suspicions concerning senior officials. Treating those suspicions as proof of Lukashenko's personal guilt would distort the facts; the demand for truth and trials of those responsible remains absolute.
August 2020 showed how the authorities answered demands for an honest election: mass arrests, beatings and torture. An OSCE report documented grave violations, and a UN investigation found widespread and systematic human rights violations. People were imprisoned for peaceful protest; journalists and rights defenders were persecuted for reporting what happened. We regard this as criminal conduct by the authorities.
The repression continues. Human Rights Watch's 2026 report describes politically motivated prosecutions, torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, and pressure on journalists and rights defenders. UN experts concluded that some violations may amount to crimes against humanity, particularly imprisonment and persecution on political grounds. This is a grave legal assessment of possible acts, not an individual criminal conviction of Lukashenko.
Our conclusion is direct: Lukashenko bears political responsibility for the system of fear built under his rule. We call him a criminal in the moral and political sense for the violence and repression under his government, and demand an independent investigation into the individual criminal responsibility of everyone involved, including the highest leadership. Belarus needs the release of political prisoners, the truth about the disappeared, trials for those responsible, and elections in which citizens' votes truly decide the country's future.