Belarus | Human rights organization: Belarus arrested at least 24 people on Tuesday

Human rights organization According to Viasna, Belarus arrested at least 24 people in different parts of the country on Tuesday, AFP reports.

Among those arrested are also recently released political prisoners who have remained in Belarus after their release.

According to Viasna, employees of the Belarusian security service KGB have raided the homes of political prisoners and families of former political prisoners. The organization urged family members to be careful.

Belarus autocratic leader Alexander Lukashenko came to power once again after the fraudulent elections of 2020. Since then, Belarus has used, among other things, brutal police violence against those who had participated in anti-government demonstrations before the elections.

Hundreds of thousands of people have fled Belarus after the 2020 protests to neighboring Poland and Lithuania.

A jailed Nobel Prize-winning democracy activist Ales Byalyatsky founded by Viasna, there are 1,415 political prisoners in Belarus.

Tuesday's arrests took place before Lukashenka and the Russian president Vladimir Putin meeting scheduled for this week.

In exile current Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsihanouskaya warned on Tuesday about a new wave of raids and mass arrests on the messaging service X.

“The sad fact is that no one can feel safe in our country,” he wrote.

Protests in Belarus broke out in 2020 after Lukashenka was accused of falsifying election results. According to the opposition, the real winner of the election was Tsihanouskaja, who later fled the country.

Tsihanouskaja's ally Marya Kalesnikava decided to stay in Belarus. They tried to force him out of the country, but he tore up his passport and was arrested. Kolesnikova is now serving an 11-year prison sentence and her health is believed to have deteriorated in prison.

Belarus has become even more isolated from the rest of the world since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Belarus has supported Russia's attack by, among other things, allowing Russia to fire ballistic missiles from the territory of Belarus.