The Head of the ICCI “Our House” Olga Karach together with Anaïs MARIN, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, spoke today at the European Parliament. The speech was devoted to a general overview of the human rights situation in Belarus.

Olga Karach presented the situation of child political prisoners at the meeting. On the Our House website you can find monitoring on children political prisoners in Belarus.

Children in prisons in Belarus are abused, tortured and essentially used as slaves – they are forced to work for very low wages. The Lukashenka’s regime has been building this slave system for years, and for him children are just a tool to get additional income.

The police officers were not allowed to take the prisoners to the detention centre, but the police officers were not allowed to take them to the detention centre. Political prisoners wear yellow patches in Belarusian prisons – you can read about this in the Our House article “Color-coded stigmatization and labeling of peaceful protesters and prisoners in Belarusian prison“.

Olga Karach also paid special attention to the fact that children who are held in prisons still do not have access to a normal education, nor are they able to obtain basic school certificates.

Olga Karach mentioned the fact that by 29 January 2021, at least 1200 minors had participated in the protests against the regime, about 300 reports were drawn up for minors and about 400 reports for parents. Parents were further summoned to juvenile commissions, where they were threatened with the removal of their children. These figures were taken from official sources of the illegitimate authorities. Our House believes that there were in fact many times more such cases.

At the end of the session the European delegation was of the opinion that more attention should be paid to the situation of children’s rights in Belarus. Olga Karach and Our House are convinced that children’s rights should become one of the priorities in the work of international human rights organisations.

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