Dock In The Hague Court Awaiting Lukashenka?

The evidence base looks serious enough.

On June 27, the ruler of Belarus outraged by Pavel Latushka's appeal to the International Criminal Court to investigate into the involvement of Aliaksandr Lukashenka in bringing Ukrainian children into our country.

"And me to the criminal court! For what? When this process of children's rehabilitation started, I somehow missed it, I even did not know what they were taking children there for. They want to put me on trial for that. They're the scum of the earth. They're grabbing for whatever they can get," said the ruler of Belarus.

Salidarnasts explains how serious the reasons for Lukashenka's concerns look.

We remind that in March, it became known that the International Criminal Court (ICC) suspects Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova of illegal deportation and illegal transfer of children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia.

The evidence base looks quite serious: the cases when Ukrainian children were taken to the Russian Federation and not returned to Ukraine are well known. They are placed in orphanages in Russia, adopted and given Russian citizenship.

We must note right away that there is no such evidence base for the actions of the Belarusian authorities (at least, not in the public space at the moment). However, there are the following points on which human rights activists and volunteers lay claim to the Lukashenka regime.

1. The removal of Ukrainian children for "health improvement": issues on voluntary consent and propaganda

Article 49 IV of the Geneva Convention states: "Individual or mass forcible transfers and deportations of protected persons from the occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to the territory of any other country, whether occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motivation".

Representatives of the Belarusian authorities emphasize that children from the "DPR" and "LPR" came to our country for rehabilitation voluntarily and with the consent of their parents. However, Pavel Latushka believes that "in order to establish the fact of committing a crime of illegal transfer of civilians from the occupied territories, it is absolutely irrelevant whether these actions were performed with the aim to move such persons permanently or temporarily".

We remind you that international law recognizes Ukraine's borders as they were before 2014. The Belarusian authorities have repeatedly acknowledged that they provide "rehabilitation" to Ukrainian children from occupied Donbas.

In May 2023, Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Anatol Hlaz said: "Since 2016, we have hosted children from Ukraine, including from Donbas and, in particular, from Donetsk".

In fact, children from Donbas started being brought in even earlier: in July 2015, at the invitation of the Navahrudak and Lida diocese of the Belarusian Orthodox Church, children from Donetsk and Horlivka were brought in for holidays.

Later, paralympian Aliaksei Talai and his eponymous foundation got actively involved in the transportation.

On June 27, 2023, Lukashenka publicly confirmed his involvement in the matter: "He (Aliaksei Talai - S.) contacted me ten times. I went out to Putin, I said: let us spend a part of the Union budget on these kids. That's how we started to bring them. After they were cured, they left.

However, funding came not only from the budget of the so-called Union State. In September 2021, Aliaksandr Lukashenka signed an order to allocate funds from the presidential reserve fund to finance the cost of recreation and rehabilitation of children from Donetsk region in the Zubronak centre.

In June this year, Talai said: "Although we are social activists and benefactors, I had to consult with the head of state at this difficult time... Having received the agreement and support of the head of state, we started working on the possibility of recreation for Donbas children in Belarus".

However, there could be much more serious claims to the Belarusian authorities, who insist that Ukrainian children came to Belarus for treatment without coercion.

In April, Russian news agencies reported: disabled children from Donbas and Zaporizhzhia came to Belarus for rehabilitation, "some of the children were deprived of their parents in the war zone".

In other words, we are already talking not only about children from the long-occupied territory, but also from the territory that the Russian authorities have just seized. It remains to be seen whether these children were able to return to their places of origin and reunite with their relatives in accordance with the Fourth Geneva Convention. And the big question is, how could they have been legally relocated to Belarus if some of them "lost their parents"?

Human rights activists and volunteers also criticize the Belarusian regime for trying to "brainwash" the children.

So last year, during a performance in front of them, singer Aleksandra Hruzdeva wished: "Let us to live in peace, let Biden die, Zelenski die too, and let Putin prosper and take control of all Ukraine".

Meanwhile, the UN International Convention on the Rights of the Child states (Article 29) that a child should be educated to respect "the national values of the country in which the child resides, the country of origin and other civilisations different from his or her own".

2. Removal of Ukrainian children from the temporarily occupied regions of Ukraine to Belarus in the first half of 2022

On February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine. Russian troops attacked their neighbours, including from the territory of Belarus - and temporarily occupied parts of Chernihiv and Kyiv regions.

Thousands of "refugees" - this was the wording used by the Belarusian state media - began arriving in Belarus, or more precisely in sanatoria in Homel region. Including children with their parents.

However, there is evidence in the media that questions the voluntary consent of Ukrainian citizens to go to Belarus: the process was organized under the control of the Russian troops, at least some families were not given a choice.

Let us return to Article 49 of the Geneva Convention IV, where after the thesis on the prohibition of forcible transfer of the civilian population from the occupied territory to another country there is the following: "However, the Occupying Power may undertake total or partial evacuation of a particular occupied area, if the security of the population or imperative military reasons so demand. In such evacuations, protected persons may only be transferred into the interior of the occupied territory, except where it is impracticable. The population evacuated in this manner is to be returned to their homes as soon as the military operations in the area have ended".

According to this article, the removal of Ukrainian citizens to Belarus raises questions: why were they not moved deep into the occupied regions of Ukraine and were they brought back after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chernihiv Region?

We would like to add that on May 31, Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that his country had confirmation that the forced transfer of Ukrainian children and prisoners of war had taken place on the territory of Belarus with the involvement of the Belarusian authorities.