A/HRC/38/51 15. The Special Rapporteur is of the view that the international scrutiny exercised by the Human Rights Council, the only body currently carrying out such work, is an invaluable tool for deterring attempts by the authorities of Belarus to further tighten their control over civil and political rights. In particular, the Special Rapporteur believes that the continued existence of his mandate is key to the survival of a nucleus of civil society organizations working on human rights issues. B. Methodology 16. In his last year as the mandate holder, the Special Rapporteur had hoped that the State party’s authorities would reply positively to his request to visit Belarus. However, that request, like those made in previous years, remained unanswered at the time of finalizing the present report. 17. The Special Rapporteur is grateful to the authorities of Belarus for having allowed him to enter the country in July 2017, at the invitation of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Although not acknowledged by the State party’s authorities as being on a country visit, the Special Rapporteur was able to meet with a number of civil society actors, human rights defenders, members of the political opposition and media representatives. He also attended the sentencing of a human rights defender, experiencing at first hand the dysfunctional nature of the judicial system (see A/72/493, para. 60). 18. The Special Rapporteur regrets that the authorities of Belarus did not take advantage of his presence in the country to engage at least on issues of potentially mutual agreement, thus missing an opportunity to showcase alleged progress regarding the Government’s human rights record. 19. As in previous years, the Special Rapporteur, owing to his inability to conduct a proper in situ visit, based his assessment on the Government’s statements and records and on the numerous reports he had received from civil society actors, human rights defenders, relatives of political prisoners and disappeared persons, diplomats and United Nations entities. II. Legal framework and related developments 20. The enforcement of presidential decree No. 3 of 2015 was first announced as being postponed, and subsequently abandoned all together. However, the principle of stigmatizing and punishing individuals who refuse to benefit from jobs provided by the State on the basis of loyalty to the executive has not disappeared. Under the presidential decree, fines for such individuals would be replaced by denial of access to subsidized hot water, gas and heating, under Council of Ministers resolution No. 314 of 24 April 2018. Payment for those facilities would be due from 1 October 2019 onwards. 2 That situation would obviously have an adverse impact on the economic and social rights of large sectors of the population. 21. Media law amendments prepared by the presidential administration had been rubberstamped on first reading in the National Assembly at the time of writing of the present report.3 Those changes would bring about the serious, systemic deterioration of the already grave situation of freedom of expression online (see section IV (A) below). III. Engagement with the international human rights system 22. During its ninety-fourth session, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination considered the combined twentieth to twenty-third periodic reports of Belarus (CERD/C/BLR/20-23), on 30 November and 1 December 2017. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the engagement of Belarus with the Committee. 2 3 4 See www.svaboda.org/a/29193768.html (in Belarusian). See https://rsf.org/en/news/belarus-media-law-could-get-even-more-repressive.