Columns

The last month of the accursed year of 2022 invites us to attempt to assess it. It was obviously a watershed year that involved the end of an era of relative peace in Europe (yes, the wars in the Balkans…

Without declaring war or calling the war in Ukraine a war, the Russian government has announced a mobilization and is continuing its illegal recruitment of various groups. Lying about the need for “protection” from NATO countries, it has announced the…

In late June, at the height of the war, Ukraine ratified the Istanbul Convention – the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. On the one hand, this makes complete sense: Ukraine hopes to…

When the famous Soviet figure-skaters Belousova and Protopopov fled the USSR in 1979, asking for political asylum in Switzerland, they were called traitors and renegades. There was even a verse: “So you are just deserters, just vlasovtsy [supporters of Soviet…

Much of the world’s attention is currently fixed on Ukraine. People in various countries are following the news closely, learning the names of Ukrainian cities, taking in refugees, and sending humanitarian packages. Many are shocked by evidence of the aggressors’…

I remember August 2011 as the month my friend and colleague Ales Bialiatski, a human rights defender and director of the Belarussian Viasna Human Rights Centre, was arrested. Bialiatski was immediately recognized as a political prisoner being prosecuted for this human…