Lukashenka's Crimes Receive New Legal Qualification

Human rights activists are calling for an arrest warrant for the dictator.

Freedom House, along with the human rights centers ZMINA, Viasna, and the Regional HRC, have prepared a report “Stolen Childhood”. It contains evidence of how the Belarusian authorities are erasing the identity of Ukrainian children through displacement, re-education, and militarization of their consciousness, Voice of America reports.

Similar processes are taking place in the Russian Federation and in the temporarily occupied areas of Ukraine, including the Crimea.

Confidential data on Ukrainian children displaced to Belarus was provided to human rights activists by the association of former Belarusian security forces (BELPOL).

Among the main conclusions made by the authors of the study are the following:

“Aliaksandr Lukashenka personally laid the foundation for the resettlement of Ukrainian children to the territory of Belarus,” and that “the Belarusian regime is actively implementing the Russian state policy of destroying Ukrainian identity through systematic ideological indoctrination and re-education of children.”

“The facts support the conclusion that the Belarusian regime copied the Russian government's systematic approach to the transfer of Ukrainian children in order to erase their national identity. During the analysis of the cases of children deprived of parental care, the researchers identified at least three groups whose transfer to Belarus qualifies as deportation,” the authors of the “Stolen Childhood” report.

The experts recorded the following: “There are five categories of people who became accomplices in the transfer, re-education and militarization of Ukrainian children: Belarusian officials, Russian officials, officials of the “union state”, the occupation authorities in Ukraine and Belarusian representatives of GONGOs (state-created non-governmental organizations — edit.)”.

In this regard, the authors of the report appeal to foreign governments, the Ukrainian authorities, the International Coalition for the Return of Ukrainian Children, international donors and civil society to call on the International Criminal Court to launch an investigation into the displacement, ideological indoctrination and militarization of Ukrainian children by the Belarusian authorities. And also to issue arrest warrants for Aliaksandr Lukashenka, State Secretary of the “Union State of Russia and Belarus” Dzmitry Miazentsau, Prime Minister of Russia and Chairman of the “Council of Ministers of the Union State” Mikhail Mishustin and Belarusian Paralympic athlete and head of the Foundation Aliaksei Talai, who played a central role in the project to resettle Ukrainian children to Belarus.

In addition, the authors of the report called for joint work to create a single international mechanism to facilitate the return of Ukrainian children from the territory of Belarus.

“This suggests that no one is going to stop military actions in the near future”

Freedom House Ukraine Program Director Yuriy Yurkevich draws attention to the fact that the authors of the “Stolen Childhood” report do not use the word “deportation” when describing the actions of Russia and Belarus towards Ukrainian children. According to Yurkevich, it is much more important to talk about the militarization of their consciousness through special educational programs and the indoctrination of children displaced from the occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia and Belarus.

“We are talking about a crime against humanity being committed — discriminatory persecution of children, the purpose of which is to “reforge” Ukrainian children into loyal Russian citizens, erase their national identity, replace it with something opposite and make them enemies of their nation,” he emphasized in a conversation with a correspondent of the Russian Service of the Voice of America.

According to the Freedom House Ukraine Program Director, such a reclassification of the accusation is very important not only from a legal but also from a moral point of view. Because it is important to describe as accurately as possible what is happening to Ukrainian children who were forcibly removed to the territory of the aggressor country and its closest satellite, as well as to those who remain in the temporarily occupied territories. In total, according to Yuriy Yurkevich, we may be talking about one and a half million Ukrainian children. “In addition, in order to call on the international community and the International Criminal Court to consider this case from a new angle and issue four warrants, we are trying to solve the problem of the legal vacuum in which these children find themselves,” explains the Ukrainian human rights activist.

In addition, the authors of the report “Stolen Childhood” appealed to the ICC with a request to further qualify the criminal cases against Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova so that not only the forced deportation of Ukrainian children is taken into account, but also their militarization and political indoctrination. “This is not only about human rights violations and distortion of educational programs, which is happening in the occupied territories of Ukraine. But if we take “Yunarmiya”, they have set themselves an ambitious task of forming from ten to fifteen percent of the mobilization reserve of Russia by 2030. This is part of a huge system of militarization of Russian society as a whole, and similar processes are also happening in the Republic of Belarus. And this speaks, among other things, about the true goals of the Russian Federation in this war, and that no one is going to stop military actions in the near future,” the interlocutor of the Voice of America is sure.

Yuriy Yurkevich also reported that approximately every fifth child of those who were returned to Ukraine suffered physical harm, and every second suffered psychological trauma. “In principle, this can be classified as mental torture,” he believes.

And at the end of his commentary, the executive director of Freedom House Ukraine emphasizes: “This study and the application to the International Criminal Court were made based on the interests of Ukraine and Ukrainian children. This is not a question of responsibility of any specific individuals, be they Russian or Belarusian. It was important for us to restore justice specifically in relation to children. And our recommendations speak about what should happen in Ukraine itself in order to find these children, return them, rehabilitate them. This is what determines our legal strategy when we move away from the narrow topic of deportation and talk about what is happening to Ukrainian children.”

“When there is a lack of new information, the Ukrainian agenda disappears from public view”

Onisia Sinyuk, a legal analyst at the ZMINA human rights center, said that when working on the report, the authors' group used data from open sources and insider information. “In particular, representatives of the BELPOL organization, which includes former employees of Belarusian law enforcement agencies, shared confidential information with us. We confirmed this information by searching for additional information in open sources,” she gave an example in a conversation with a correspondent of the Russian Service of the Voice of America.

In particular, the authors of the report used keywords in the search engine, such as, for example, “Ukrainian children”, but did not find anything they needed. It turned out that they needed to enter the term “children from the new Russian territories” or “Russian children in Belarus”. And in both cases, they were able to find confirmation of the facts stated by independent informants.

In addition, Russian and Belarusian media were constantly monitored, including publications on social networks of those people whom the authors of the report suspected of complicity in the abduction of children from the temporarily occupied Russian territories. The posts of relatives of abducted Ukrainian children were also closely monitored.

The confidential part of the report “Stolen Childhood” contains the names of some Ukrainian children who were forcibly taken from the occupied Ukrainian regions. However, for security reasons, these names have not been published.

The Freedom House report is addressed primarily to Western politicians and officials, as well as the public of democratic countries. Onisia Sinyuk is confident that everything related to Russian aggression against Ukraine must be kept in the spotlight for the Western audience. “When there is a lack of new information, the Ukrainian agenda disappears from the public eye in our partner countries. Because there are no fresh reports on news channels and other media.

Therefore, when we presented this report, it was received very actively and with interest precisely because we provided new information on this topic. Because previously people knew on this topic only what happened immediately after the start of full-scale aggression in 2022, and we spoke about the development of this situation, that is, about what is happening to Ukrainian children now, in 2024. It is precisely new information that needs to maintain interest in this topic, because each person has their own life, their own problems and interests, and they cannot maintain attention to any topic without constantly learning new facts,” concludes the legal analyst of the ZMINA human rights center.

“Ukrainian children are persecuted on the basis of their nationality and geography”

Kateryna Rashevska, a legal expert at the Regional Human Rights Center, recalls that earlier reports on this topic were provided by the Yale University School of Public Health and Pavel Latushka's team.

“They talked about the forced displacement or deportation of Ukrainian children to the territory of Belarus. We do not talk about this because, for moral reasons, we did not communicate with the children themselves, nor with the parents or legal representatives of the children who were taken to Belarus and then returned to the occupied territories. It is very dangerous to call them, to clarify something, and without this it is impossible to conclude that this was indeed a deportation,” she explained in a conversation with a correspondent of the Russian Service of the Voice of America.

The authors of the report decided to focus on what happened to the deported Ukrainian children on the territory of Belarus. Namely, the processes of “re-education” of children, their indoctrination and attempts to make “Russian patriots” out of them, who will then be ready to fight for the interests of the Kremlin.

“We also analyzed the militarization of Ukrainian children on the territory of the Republic of Belarus and very quickly realized that what is happening there, namely the negative impact on the physical and mental state of Ukrainian children, allows us to conclude that this is a crime against humanity,” continues Kateryna Rashevska.

And all the corresponding actions, according to the authors of the report “Stolen Childhood,” can be qualified in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as “discriminatory persecution.”

“Ukrainian children are persecuted on the basis of nationality and geography, as well as because they belong to the group most vulnerable to the enemy. These may be orphans or children deprived of guardianship. There are cases when families displaced, for example, from Mariupol to Donetsk, found themselves completely dependent on the occupation administration, and parents were forced to agree to the transfer of their children to camps on the territory of Belarus or the Russian Federation,” the expert explains.

On this basis, the authors of the report insist on the need for the International Criminal Court to issue arrest warrants for Aliaksandr Lukashenka, Mikhail Mishustin, Dzmitry Miazentsau and Aliaksei Talai.

Several cases of forced transfer of Ukrainian orphans to the territory of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus were also proven. “And there are legal peculiarities here, because Belarus as a state had to obtain permission from Ukraine as a state, because these children are Ukrainians, and Ukraine and its competent authorities are responsible for them. And if we no longer have diplomatic relations with Russia, then they remain with Belarus, so Belarus had the opportunity to ask Ukraine for the appropriate permission, to agree on the conditions of removal and on the program for the stay of these children, but Belarus did not do this. Because for Belarus, these children are Russian citizens, as well as for the Russian Federation itself. And this is a very important point, because it deprives the child of the right to identity,” the Voice of America interlocutor states.

And she emphasizes that the large-scale and dynamic nature of these crimes against Ukrainian children provide grounds for the International Criminal Court to begin an investigation into all proven episodes, because neither Russia nor Belarus are going to stop their criminal policies. “Therefore, simple statements are not enough here,” Kateryna Rashevska concludes.

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