Lawyer Sapelka: Freezing the lists of "extremists" is an attempt to sell an imitation for real concessions
Since mid-September, the Belarusian authorities have stopped publicly updating the List of individuals involved in extremist activity and the List of organizations, formations, and individual entrepreneurs involved in extremist activity. Why is this noteworthy? Quite simply: these are the penultimate, albeit incomplete, lists of victims and potential victims of politically motivated criminal prosecution in Belarus. For an outside observer accustomed to the dry language of numbers and graphs, this pause will create at least the illusion of a technical slowdown of the repressive conveyor belt, writes Viasna human rights defender Pavel Sapelka.
Screenshot from video
From the perspective of human rights analysis, shutting down yet another public registry is not a step toward normalization, but a direct manifestation of the tactic of covert repression. A systematic elimination of verifiable sources of information regarding the scale of persecutions, the fates of specific individuals, and the nature of trials is taking place. But that is not all.
The Trap of Metrics for the Diplomatic Political Class
"Viasna" never tires of repeating: any statistics regarding the results of the activities of Belarus's security agencies must be evaluated strictly with a disclaimer regarding severely restricted access to information. Published data has always comprised only what is technically accessible or permitted for disclosure by the regime itself.
Nevertheless, it should be considered a fact: in international political and diplomatic practice, there is room for inertia of perception. Responsible politicians need clear indicators and verifiable metrics. When official lists stop growing, external observers face the temptation to report a "decrease in the level of pressure."
In Minsk, this mechanical approach is clearly understood. By stopping the publication of updates, the authorities deliberately create an information fog, disorienting the democratic community and attempting to reduce the cost of their constant presence on the international sanctions and human rights agenda.
And this is the first reason behind the "technical causes" of the lull on the Ministry of Internal Affairs website.
The Absence of Publications Is Not the End of Record-Keeping
From a legal and practical standpoint, it is important to distinguish three key aspects of this pause.
Classification does not mean cancellation. The absence of new names and entities on the Ministry of Internal Affairs website may only mean that the registry has ceased to be public. Meanwhile, various departmental databases of the KGB, the Ministry of Justice, the National Bank, and the State Border Committee continue to be populated behind closed doors. Citizens will still face disenfranchisement—blocked accounts, bans on professions and transactions—post factum, without the opportunity to assess legal risks in advance.
The system has no need for "lists." In recent years, Belarus's repressive legislation has been fundamentally restructured. Financial, administrative, and civil legal restrictions today are tied not only to inclusion in special registries, but also directly to the elements of "extremist" offenses. The security apparatus is fully prepared to operate without public lists, automatically applying the entire spectrum of legal restrictions at the stage of indictment or sentencing. Recall the texts of recent amnesty laws: in order to prevent "extremists" from being released early or receiving a reduced sentence, several filters were provided at once: presence on a list, a specific article of accusation, lack of severe disciplinary penalties, and absence of unpaid monetary fines.
A return to proven institutional mechanisms. For Belarus, extrajudicial, "quiet" expulsion of dissenters from public life is far from a new practice.
The second possible reason for freezing the lists is the technical feasibility of doing without them, at least temporarily.
A Rollback to a Hybrid Model of Displacement
The attempt by the directors of the Belarusian legal system in 2020–2023 to construct an open legislative framework of total legal terror modeled after the fascist, authoritarian, and totalitarian regimes of the 20th century encountered obvious costs.
The toughening and blatant unconstitutionality of new laws pursued a clear goal: to free the perpetrators of repression from the "chimera of conscience" and the fear of possible liability for violating legal prescriptions. However, open lists and show trials proved too cumbersome; they cemented the status of an international pariah and daily provided international institutions with an evidence base of human rights crimes officially "authorized" by the authorities themselves.
The current step is a rollback to an old, well-established institutional practice dating back to the late 1990s and 2000s.
Let me remind you: the total ousting of the opposition, independent experts, and civil society from government bodies, administration, education, science, culture, and the state sector was practically completed long before 2020. And this was done without any public lists of "extremists"—through contract employment mechanisms, "blacklists" of ideological departments, unspoken preventive monitoring, and the invisible work of the KGB. When the regime needed to restrict travel abroad for "untrustworthy" individuals in 2011–2012, there was no need to invoke the law; lawlessness worked: for example, human rights defender Valiantsin Stefanovic became an "evader" of military service, even though he had completed his conscription back in Soviet times. Strange, but even more astounding—defense attorney Maryna Kavaleuskaya was given the exact same reason for her travel ban at that time...
Today, the regime is simply returning to its natural habitat—to invisible, yet even more total institutional purges, which are harder for human rights defenders to document and practically impossible to turn into precise statistics for international bodies.
This is the third aspect: the availability of a strong, effective alternative even makes it possible to abandon the "erroneous" path.
A Signal of Readiness for Compromise and Tasks for International Policy
My main conclusion from what is happening is this: the return to "invisible" repressions is a marker of the regime changing its foreign policy approach.
Up until 2024, the regime openly bragged about the scale of repressions, explaining them as the "defense of sovereignty" and demonstratively ignoring Western reactions. However, it seems that by now the cost of total isolation and absolute dependence on a single foreign policy vector has become critical. The transition from demonstrative fascist-style law to covert purges shows: Minsk vitally needs communication channels with the West and is therefore simulating compliance with external conditions.
This is the fourth reason for the collapse of the "On Measures to Counter Extremism and the Rehabilitation of Nazism" tab on the Ministry of Internal Affairs website. There is no doubt that this tab is no longer being administered from the offices of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; these glitches coincided with the quest for reciprocity across the political offices of the democratic West by envoys from Minsk and their satellites.
This is definitely not a demonstration of strength; it is a probing of reactions. The regime is testing the international political establishment for tolerance of lies and hypocrisy: will the cosmetic disappearance of figures from the websites of law enforcement agencies and human rights organizations be enough for the West to begin discussions on softening its stance?
The conditions for normalizing relations with the Belarusian authorities, formulated by the EU back in 2020 and reaffirmed since, remain unchanged, and among them are:
- the cessation of all repressions and human rights violations against persons participating in the pro-democracy movement, independent media, and representatives of civil society;
- the release, rehabilitation, and payment of financial compensation to political prisoners;
- ensuring safe conditions for the return of persons in political and forced exile;
- facilitating a serious, credible, and inclusive political process resulting in free and fair elections under the observation of the OSCE/ODIHR.
Replacing these steps with the freezing of lists against the backdrop of ongoing criminal cases during investigation and in courts, or targeted acts of pardon amidst ongoing arrests, is an attempt to sell an imitation for real concessions.
The international community must not fall into the trap of a visual reduction in numbers. If the regime starts hiding traces of its actions, it means that external pressure remains a tangible factor for it. And the only correct response to this probing is not a slackening of attention, but the demand for real, systemic, and measurably legal changes in Belarus.