Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Adviser on Inclusion and Equality, Julia Mickiewicz, comments on the joint statement by TG House and Prismatica documenting the persecution of LGBTQ+ people in Belarus.
A total of 34 cases of persecution have been documented in 2026. Ms. Mickiewicz notes that repression targets not only activists but also ordinary people. Security forces use various forms of pressure, from monitoring social media to recruitment and harassment through family members:
“The statement by TG House and Prismatica shows that Article 19.16 of the Code of Administrative Offenses, which targets so-called ‘LGBT propaganda’, is not about ‘protecting values’. It is a new tool of control.
What is most alarming about these findings is that those targeted are not activists but ordinary people. A photo on someone’s phone, a social media subscription, a rainbow pin, or a conversation with a friend can be enough to prompt a visit from the police or the KGB. Security forces monitor social media, create fake profiles on dating apps, and search the homes of relatives of people who have already left the country. Repression has long since crossed Belarus’s borders.
I also want to highlight forced recruitment. The case of a queer Belarusian who was told at a police station to ‘detect others like you’ shows how this system works. A person is broken down through humiliation, threats of criminal charges, and pressure on their education, family, and access to healthcare — then forced to inform on others. This is a deliberate strategy to destroy trust within the community, the same strategy the regime has used against Belarusian society as a whole since 2020. Responsibility for the consequences of such recruitment lies with those who recruit and coerce people, not with those who are subjected to pressure.
These cases are extremely difficult to prove: the police often leave no official records or summonses. That is why I urge our international partners to take the specific nature of the persecution of LGBTQ+ people into account when considering applications for support with obtaining legal status. The absence of paperwork does not mean the absence of a threat.
We will continue to raise this issue in our dialogue with international organizations and support the work of TG House, Prismatica, and other initiatives that document human rights violations and help people escape danger.
LGBTQ+ Belarusians are part of our society and part of the struggle for a free and democratic Belarus. We must keep reminding the world of that”.
