A/HRC/35/40 listed under the heading “Equality and non-discrimination” and does not address the shortcomings of the State authorities responsible for the management of prison conditions. F. Arbitrary arrest and detention, political prisoners and enforced disappearances 83. The authorities arbitrarily arrested hundreds of peaceful demonstrators in February and March 2017. Most of them were apprehended without any explanation and later released. Others were fined and incarcerated for up to two weeks on unsubstantiated misdemeanour charges. 84. Additionally, on 21, 22 and 24 March, the security forces arrested 32 people on suspicion of committing a crime under part 3 of article 293 of the Criminal Code (training or other preparation of persons for participation in mass disorders and funding or other material support of such activities). Those arrested were allegedly planning to overthrow the Government on Freedom Day. The official media accompanied the arrests with reports of related incidents, such as gunmen in a car attempting to force their way through a border checkpoint in Ukraine. As at 31 March, some detainees were still being held in the jails of the Ministry of the Interior and the KGB security service in Minsk. 20 85. “Preventively” apprehended detainees also included the leader of the Young Front organization, Zmitser Dashkevich. Former presidential candidate Mikalai Statkevich, a main leader of some of the rallies, disappeared for the three days of the Freedom Day events and was eventually released from a KGB facility. 86. The mass arrests and the preventive detention of activists and politicians prior to Freedom Day annul an apparent attempt in the second half of 2016 to replace the systematic arbitrary detention of activists participating in non-authorized rallies by heavy fines. 87. Many activists had actually found the system of fines no less intimidating than arrests, especially as in 2016 the authorities had stopped mutating the unpaid fines into days of incarceration days in many cases and had resorted rather to the confiscation and auctioning of personal property, including real estate, such as apartments. 88. The case of Nina Baginskaya, aged 70, illustrates the strategy of swapping detention for fines and then confiscation. She was heavily fined for having waved a national flag alone on a square in May 2016. For the unpaid part of the fines, her washing machine and microwave oven were seized and auctioned, even as another portion of her fines were deducted from her pension.21 Later, in August 2016, her summer house was auctioned, as the equivalent of $3700 worth of unpaid fines. 22 89. Since the Freedom Day rallies, arbitrary detention has been used again to try to silence the most vocal human rights defenders and political opponents of the Government. In the view of the Special Rapporteur, the disproportionate use of judicial force against dissenting voices, often on fabricated grounds, makes the Government accountable for violating the right to freedom of movement, in addition to the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly. 90. A number of detentions have gone unreported by the authorities. In Brest on 5 March 2017, five representatives of a contest movement were arrested and were still in custody at the time the present report was finalized. In Molodechno, just when the rally was over on 10 March, four political leaders and nine journalists were arrested for periods between 7 and 15 days. On 12 March, two bloggers were also arrested in Brest without justification. Another blogger was tentatively abducted by three individuals in plain clothes on 11 March in Pinsk; however, he managed to escape owing to the intervention of other people who were present and the inaction of police officers who were also present. 20 21 22 See www.belarusdigest.com/story/belarus-authorities-uncover-putsch-deter-mass-protests-29530. See www.svaboda.org/a/27758841.html. See www.belapan.com/archive/2016/08/08/859041/. 13