A/HRC/38/51 I. Introduction A. Background 1. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus was established in 2012 by the Human Rights Council in its resolution 20/13, on the basis of a report by the United Nations 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 five times, for one year each time, in resolutions 23/15, 26/25, 29/17, 32/26 and 35/27. 2. The present report is submitted to the Council pursuant to its resolution 35/27, covers the period 1 April 2017–30 April 2018, is based on information received up to the latter date, and is the current Special Rapporteur’s last report to the Council, as his tenure ends on 31 October 2018. 3. The handling of human rights in the reporting period was marked by the routine use by the authorities of the entrenched oppressive legal and administrative regulations. In a potentially grave development, at the end of the reporting period, the National Assembly passed on first reading a bill on amendments to the law on the mass media and other legal texts, which, if promulgated, would eliminate all remaining freedom of expression online. The period was also marked by a renewed crackdown by law enforcement agencies on peaceful demonstrators, members of the political opposition, human rights defenders and independent journalists in March 2018, on the occasion of Freedom Day, prior to and during which more than a hundred individuals were arbitrarily arrested and detained. 4. In his previous report to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/35/40 and Corr.1), the Special Rapporteur described the deterioration, in early 2017, of the human rights situation in Belarus, which, like the March 2018 crackdown, involved the severe repression of peaceful demonstrations against presidential decree No. 3 of 2015 on the prevention of social dependency. The decree financially targeted at least 470,000 individuals labelled as “social parasites” for not registering as employed for a minimum of 183 days per year. The demonstrations, which were held in Minsk and in numerous other cities throughout the country, were the largest since those organized in the wake of the December 2010 presidential elections, the violent repression of which prompted the United Nations to put the situation of human rights in Belarus under the scrutiny of the Special Rapporteur. 5. The Special Rapporteur analysed the cyclical nature of violent crackdowns on fundamental freedoms in Belarus, as illustrated by the repression of the March events after a brief period of resorting to fines instead of arbitrary arrests (A/HRC/35/40 and Corr.1). While daily public life in the country is hindered by an underlying system-wide and purposefully oppressive set of laws and by the acts by State officials, the authorities nevertheless regularly scale up repression throughout violent crackdowns in order to maintain pressure. 6. In his first report to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/23/52), the Special Rapporteur analysed a series of shortcomings that the High Commissioner for Human Rights had identified a year previously. All of those shortcomings persist after six years of international scrutiny, and certain human rights issues have actually worsened, especially the situation of the media, political pluralism and legal provisions. 7. In his report to the thirty-second session of the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/32/48), the Special Rapporteur conducted an in-depth survey of compliance by Belarus with the recommendations of the United Nations human rights mechanisms, including the universal periodic review. The analysis showed the absence of any move towards the implementation of such recommendations, demonstrating a lack of political will on the part of the State party’s authorities to improve the human rights record of Belarus. 8. The adoption, in October 2016, of an inter-agency plan for the period 2016–2019 for the implementation of recommendations made during the second cycle of the universal 2