A/HRC/35/40 I. Introduction A. Background 1. The mandate of Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus was created in 2012 by the Human Right Council in its resolution 20/13, on the basis of a report by the High Commissioner for Human Rights (A/HRC/20/8). The Council requested the mandate holder to report annually to it and to the General Assembly. The Council has since renewed the mandate four times, for one year, in resolutions 23/15, 26/25, 29/17 and 32/26. 2. The present report is submitted to the Council pursuant to its resolution 32/26. The report covers the period from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017 and is based on information received up to the latter date. The Special Rapporteur makes reference to his latest report to the General Assembly (A/71/394), in which he focused on the electoral process in Belarus and which contains relevant information. 3. The Special Rapporteur regretfully observed a rapid and steep deterioration in the overall human rights situation in Belarus during the month of March 2017. In February 2017, 470,000 Belarusians were informed that they must pay a tax because they had worked fewer than 183 days in 2016. Ever since, waves of protest demonstrations have swept the cities and the capital with the slogan “We are not parasites”, a reference to President Lukashenka’s presidential decree No. 3 of 2015 on the prevention of social dependency, which introduced the tax to fight “social parasitism”. 4. Throughout March 2017, the Government executed a centrally planned, nationwide violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators, human rights defenders, political opponents and journalists, as well as on foreign observers of the events. The crackdown came to a head around 25 March (Freedom Day), a popular but unacknowledged commemoration of national independence. The authorities also conducted preventive arrests of political opponents and civil activists, some unannounced, some accompanied by public allegations of an armed conspiracy to overthrow the Government, thereby opening up the possibility of silencing opponents for several years. 5. The wave of mass arrests in March was the severest since the post-election crackdown in December 2010. It is another instance of the cyclical pattern of the human rights policy of the authorities. Over the past two decades, they have repeatedly returned to repression, following brief periods of relative liberalization, while leaving intact the legal order that was purposefully developed to suppress several basic human rights. The last similar cycle of repression was described in detail by the Human Rights Council when it created the mandate of the Rapporteur in 2012 (see resolution 20/13). 6. During 2016, law enforcement agents seemed to have instructions to avoid physical attacks and detention when enforcing the unchanged laws that criminalize all unregistered public activities. The authorities acted instead by dispensing administrative and financial penalties. The international human rights community hoped that this time the cyclical pattern would not reoccur. The Special Rapporteur regrets that his warnings about the dangers inherent in the systemic character of the entrenched oppressive laws have proved right. The potential for deterioration again manifested itself through mass repression of those who endeavour to exercise their rights. 7. In his most recent report to the Council, the Special Rapporteur assessed the level of compliance by Belarus with recommendations addressed by United Nations human rights mechanisms to the country (see A/HRC/29/43, paras. 28-33 and 129). In the present report, the Special Rapporteur intends to continue with that analysis, given that the Government of Belarus announced on 24 October 2016 the adoption of an inter-agency plan for the period 2016-2019 for the implementation of recommendations made during the second cycle of the universal periodic review of Belarus and by the treaty bodies.1 The Government has 1 See www.government.by/upload/docs/file706bbd75fa0cca0e.PDF. 3