Justice Update – ICC Sharpens its Focus on Belarus

Early last week, news was breaking at the International Criminal Court, when it was announced that the Chief Prosecutor would launch a preliminary inquiry into Belarus over alleged crimes against humanity.

It came after a referral was submitted by Lithuania, seeking an investigation into crimes committed by the country’s authoritarian regime, including forced deportations and persecution of persons, such as illegal arrests and torture.

Belarus has been ruled by Alexander Lukashenko since 1994, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lithuania, an ICC member state and neighbour of Belarus, is where thousands of Belarusians have fled, since being forced out of their home country.

Despite Belarus not being an ICC member state, Vilnius argues that there is a continuing crime being committed on Lithuania’s territory. That precedent was set when judges at the court that the thousands of Rohingya forced from Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh could come under the court’s aegis via Dhaka’s membership. 

Steph was at the Lithuanian embassy in The Hague, the day after the ICC  preliminary examination was announced. She spoke to Lithuania’s Vice Minister of Justice Gabija Grigaitė-Daugirdė, who was the one to hand in the referral to the ICC. As well as exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who now lives in Lithuania and Aarif Abraham, the principal lawyer for Lithuania at the ICC.

Simultaneously, the ICC prosecutor is receiving new information on Belarus from Ukrainian and Belarusian NGOs, regarding Ukrainian children being transferred from occupied territories to Belarus.

We did an episode on this with  international law scholar Yulia Ioffe and war crimes investigator Nathaniel Raymond back in May 2023, which you can listen to here.

Janet, our current Lithuanian resident, got back in touch with Yulia Ioffe to discuss the latest.

This podcast has been produced as part of a partnership with JusticeInfo.net, an independent website in French and English covering justice initiatives in countries dealing with serious violence. It is a media outlet of Fondation Hirondelle, based in Lausanne, Switzerland