Harry Pahaniaila: Lukashenka's Days Are Numbered, We See His Agony

Cockroach can be arrested by Interpol.

The UN has appointed three experts who will record evidence of human rights violations in Belarus in order to bring the accomplices of the Lukashenka regime to justice. The website Charter97.org asked the chairman of the legal commission of the Republic of Poland, the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Harry Pahaniaila, to assess such measures:

- I assess extremely positively all the activities of the international community, which are trying to change the situation in Belarus. This gives our people a certain optimism. Certain institutions of the world community, especially the UN, EU, USA, and several other Western countries, closely monitor the human rights situation in Belarus and respond to gross violations. Now they are trying to work out some strategic directions to help the Belarusian people escape from this situation of terror, which is organized by the invaders.

Lukashenka's junta is trying to stay in power with the help of violence, torture, they are trying to force people to submit to one-mindedness, but this will never happen. No one can bring the situation back to the past. I believe that Lukashenka's days are numbered, his regime began to fall apart a long time ago, and now we see his agony.

- How important is this signal for the dictator's entourage?

- Not all of them understand their professional and civil legal responsibility, which they had a hand in. Many believe that the regime will withstand, and it is necessary to support it in a consolidated manner. However, I want to note that there are some security officials, top and middle-level officials who have an objective understanding of the whole situation. Extremely negative events for society and the state are taking place in the country, which directly affect and cannot contribute to the strengthening of the state, economic power, and people's prosperity.

I'm not even talking about the lowest level of officials, for example, regional or rural. They see what is happening and live with local problems. There are people who are not with the regime but are forced to obey it. Most of these people are cowards, they hold on to their seats and chairs, which give them the opportunity to live comfortably, so they look around the corner and wait for how it will all end.

On the other hand, those who have committed serious crimes have virtually nowhere to retreat. They are nailed to the wall by the circumstances that have happened. They understand that they have blood on their hands up to the elbows, they will never clean themselves, and they will face a trial. This is not a reprisal, but a court, fair and lawful.

Today, they cowardly hide their heads in the sand in the hope that somehow they will pacify the rebellious people, they say, everything can be turned back, so to speak, to the previous decades of a quiet life. I will repeat myself once again: this will never happen in Belarus. People will fight in all possible forms, methods, they will do mischief to this regime at every step, with everything they can, until it is overthrown.

- Can you call the creation of the UN expert commission the beginning of a tribunal over the regime in Belarus?

- All actions of human rights organizations, including UN structures, are primarily aimed at the principles of normal peaceful human life, which must be supported anywhere in the world, wherever anything happens. Of course, it is extremely difficult to influence the situation from the outside, but, nevertheless, the international community, its institutions, have sufficiently influential and effective means to influence criminal governments.

The regime senses this pressure and acts realizing that it will only intensify until it leads to a positive result. Everything that international public institutions, human rights organizations, and Western governments are doing will ultimately have a beneficial effect on improving the situation in the country. The Belarusian people expect the application of additional measures that will allow, as they say, not just to beat all together Lukashenka but to put him in the dock so that he will answer for what he has done.

Universal criminal jurisdiction is one of the tools that can be used in certain circumstances. These are nuances, but the path was chosen correctly. As a lawyer, I take the situation positively.

- “Apart from the UN, other mechanisms have begun to be used to bring Lukashenka’s regime to justice. Recently it became known that a lawsuit was filed against Lukashenka in the International Criminal Court in The Hague under the article “crimes against humanity.” How would you comment on this initiative?

- This initiative is also in the right direction, although Belarus has not signed the Rome Statute, that is, the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court does not extend to citizens of Belarus. It is worth noting that even in the case of non-proliferation of jurisdiction, there are conditions and opportunities to initiate the process of prosecution. For example, if the ICC Attorney General considers the evidence of crimes to be sufficient to initiate a case. Such a procedure is prescribed because the responsibility for combating international crimes is assigned to all countries that have ratified the Rome Statute, and their governments have corresponding obligations to their citizens and UN structures.

In many countries, national legislation has appropriate criminal mechanisms to prosecute international crimes. This is universal jurisdiction, and the ICC, and the Hague Criminal Court, created under a UN mandate. But the third option I have named is a very complicated mechanism because its creation is connected with the decision of the UN Security Council on specific countries or other emergency circumstances.

All member countries must vote for the creation of such a court. Today, there are the Russian Federation and China, which are likely to veto such a decision, so I am not sure that such a court can in the future be formed specifically for the events in Belarus.

Perhaps this will happen in the future, but, so far, the very gravity of the crimes, the danger to the world community are not so serious as to resort to such a means as a special UN court in The Hague.

Much more hope should be placed on the universal criminal jurisdiction that Western countries have. The process is already underway in Lithuania, and prosecutors in Poland, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Germany, and several other countries have cases on the table.

Another possibility is through the court of the International Criminal Court if the Prosecutor General finds the need and opportunity to create a procedure for instituting a criminal court against Lukashenka and his gang.

- Somewhat earlier, a statement appeared to the Federal Prosecutor's Office of Germany about Lukashenka's crimes and the need to use the principle of universal jurisdiction against him. The authors of the initiative stated that their goal is to recognize the regime as a terrorist. What consequences can this have for Lukashenka and his government?

- For Lukashenka, the most alarming circumstances are that he is not recognized as legitimate. Thus, the Vienna Convention does not apply to him, which makes it possible to evade criminal responsibility for serious crimes, because the so-called immunity of prosecution of heads of state is in effect. Of course, this immunity can be overcome under certain conditions, but today we are talking about the fact that the countries using the universal jurisdiction, where the cases were initiated, did not recognize Lukashenka's legitimacy.

For them, he is an ordinary bandit who commits criminal acts prescribed in international treaties as crimes against humanity. He unconstitutionally seized state power and is trying to retain it by committing grave crimes, which have already led to the death of people, grievous bodily harm to citizens.

The regime demonstrated torture, illegal detention, imprisonment. It’s a nightmare that we are seeing today when people are sentenced for long periods without proper evidence. This is all a series of crimes in which not only Lukashenka is involved, but also law enforcement officers, investigators, prosecutors, judges acting in an official capacity, who are well aware that they are doing evil and are not acting according to the law.

If the procedures for initiating cases come to decisions on the issuance of arrest warrants, then the international organization Interpol can take over. It will seek and cooperate with the countries where it has branches; together with them, it will carry out the arrests of the wanted accused and bring them to justice.

This also applies to Lukashenka himself.

We remember the case of the Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, who was arrested and handed over when his plane landed in England at an airport near London. This happened on a warrant issued by the Spanish judge Baltazar Garson. There they acted exactly on the same principle of universal criminal jurisdiction because the victims of the Chilean regime and the military junta turned out to be on the territory of Spain. The victims demanded the initiation of a criminal case against the dictator, his generals, and entourage, who had committed crimes since 1973. It should be understood that such cases have no statute of limitations, they can be initiated in 20, 30, and 40 years. If there is sufficient and reliable evidence that a person has committed crimes against humanity, then justice will catch everyone.

- A question that worries many today: how, in your opinion, will the trial of Lukashenka and his accomplices look like? Under what articles can he be convicted and what sanctions do these articles provide?

- The Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus contains Article 128, which practically covers all the corpus delicti of this junta. First of all, these are extrajudicial executions. Let us remember that this is how the actions of the Lukashenka regime are assessed, connected with the elimination of their political opponents: Viktar Hanchar, Yury Zakharanka, Anatol Krasouski, Dzmitry Zavadski. Several people were also killed during the post-election speeches of citizens at peaceful protests.

There are numerous facts of violence and torture: only about two thousand people have applied to the Belarusian law enforcement agencies. Similar corpus delicti is fixed in the absolute majority of countries in the world. Today, more than 300 citizens who are in Western Europe are ready to demand that people be held accountable for the torture they have committed. I named some countries where dossiers have already been accumulated, these materials are on the tables of the prosecutor's office and the investigation. More than 30 cases are already pending before the competent authorities, which means that there is a real opportunity to bring them to the stage of issuing arrest warrants and detention of the accused.

The situation is developing on its own, these are not frozen cases, the investigation will be conducted, and the perpetrators will be identified. Evidence is collected not only by victims of violence but also by human rights organizations and several other institutions that are already involved in data collection. Today, several respected organizations have professionally set to work. It is moved from the dead point. As the people say, the process has begun.

Personally, I have high hopes for specific cases in the universal criminal jurisdiction, which may end in court proceedings either abroad or in our country. One of the most basic principles of universal criminal jurisdiction is the obligation of countries that the offender must be tried either in the country where the crime is committed or extradited for justice in the country leading the process.

For example, Germany can demand the extradition of Lukashenka in order to start the process of his criminal responsibility, or Belarus can do this too. In any case, the court will determine it, the perpetrators will be punished, and the innocent will be acquitted. As they say, a fair court will sort it out and distribute a burden equitably. This is what we expect , and it will happen.

After the fall of the regime, the new justice will be objective and legal, it will reach everyone who has committed crimes against the Belarusian people. No one will be able to hide, because, in other countries, they will be looked for too. I am not even talking about the example of Israel, which, contrary to international procedures, either lured or secretly kidnapped its enemies, including those who committed military crimes during the Holocaust. They were brought before Israel's court. History knows several such examples; evil must be punished.

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