Nearly 500 people were jailed for their political views in Belarus in 2025, according to a human rights group, which said the numbers “remain critically high” despite much-publicized prisoner releases.
Human rights activists identified 490 new political prisoners in the Kremlin-allied country last year, according to an annual report from Viasna, an organization that monitors the number of political prisoners being held by the authoritarian Belarusian regime.
The report, published on Tuesday, said authorities in the country were continuing to commit “gross violations of human rights and crimes against humanity”, including alleged instances of torture against prisoners.
The organization also said that there were over 1,200 convictions last year, and that, despite a number of releases brokered by the United States, it estimates there are still 1,120 political prisoners in the country.
It added that political detainees are subjected to “particularly harsh conditions” and “forced labor at low wages”, with even those released at the end of their sentences remaining subject to strict controls that go beyond what other convicted criminals face.
‘Belarusians must be free’
Franak Viačorka, a chief advisor to exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, said in a social media post that the report’s findings were “grim”.
Viačorka said: “In 2025 alone, 1,254 new people in Belarus were sentenced on political charges. Two political prisoners died behind bars.
“Freedom in our country means not only releasing those imprisoned, but ending further arrests and sentences. Belarusians must be free,” he added.
Strongman President Alexander Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, clamped down on political opposition in Belarus after mass protests broke out in 2020 over a presidential election result widely considered to have been rigged.
Tsikhanouskaya was the leading candidate running against Lukashenko in the poll, which sparked era-defining demonstrations and repression.
In June last year, Tsikhanouskaya’s husband Siarhei Tsikhanouski was released from a Belarus prison in a U.S.-brokered deal, as Minsk negotiated several prisoner releases with Washington in return for sanctions relief.
Ales Bialiatski, a 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner, was among 123 political prisoners freed last month after being jailed in 2021.
However, others prominent figures remain incarcerated. The Polish authorities have long sought the release of Polish-Belarusian journalist Andrzej Poczobut, who has been imprisoned in Belarus since 2021.
Poczobut, a long-time correspondent for various Polish media outlets, was sentenced in 2023 to eight years in a penal colony on charges of “inciting hatred” following a trial that human rights groups have denounced as politically motivated. Late last year he won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in recognition of his struggle.