Centre for Applied Human Rights
Andrei Paluda
Belarus, CAHR, Spring 2019
My name is Andrei Paluda, and I am from Belarus. I am 42 years old, married, have two sons and I'm a human rights defender. I was born and grew up in the eastern part our country, in the Mogilev region. Now I am living in Minsk, it’s the capital and it is the biggest and most important economic city in Belarus.
I graduated from the Interior Ministry Academy with a degree in Law and for long time I worked with economic crimes. Also, I have a special education in the sphere of human rights, it is a two-year "Advanced Human Rights Course" at the Marek Nowicki Warsaw Helsinki Committee.
My heightened sense of justice, disagreement with the policies of the Belarusian authorities, and their violation of human rights once led me to political activities. Despite the fact that I was a police officer, I was an activist of the "Zubr" movement, which brought together young people from all over Belarus who supported ideas of non-violent resistance and demanded change.
In 2004, I made a decision: I left the police and became the coordinator of the "Zubr" movement in the Mogilev and Gomel regions.
During the presidential election campaign of 2006, I and my colleagues were subjected to repression and persecution, were placed in prisons, and were fined. It was then that my knowledge as a lawyer and my experience in the police were very necessary, and very often I began to help people to appeal against illegal court sentences, carry food packages to prisons, and provide other support, including psychological assistance.
At the same time, I came to the realization that I was more interested in human rights activities rather than political ones. As a matter of human rights, I can really help people and make this world a better place.
In 2006, I started studying on the two-year "Advanced Human Rights Course" at the Marek Nowicki Warsaw Helsinki Committee.
Since 2008, I am an employee of the most famous and active human rights organization in Belarus – Human Rights Center "Viasna", where, since 2010, I have as a campaign coordinator dealt with the issue of the death penalty in our country. In addition, I am very interested in human rights education, in connection with which I quite often am the organizer and trainer of various educational programs.
Unfortunately, Belarus is the last country in Europe and the last of the post-Soviet countries where the death penalty is legally codified and that continues to apply death sentences.
Belarus is the last country in Europe where the death penalty is legally codified.
Apart from the very fact of taking a person's life, which is not only cruel, but also ineffective in fighting and preventing crime, the use of the death penalty in Belarus is accompanied by many gross human rights violations. Physical and psychological pressure is used for the purpose of obtaining a confession of guilt, and many other due process violations lead to the imposition of a death sentence in unfair trials. While on death row, death convicts are under tremendous psychological pressure due to the uncertainty of their fate; their contacts with family and their right to defense are severely circumscribed; and their correspondence is controlled by the administration of the pretrial detention center, which frequently restricts it; during the few meetings that are allowed with family members, convicts are brought out in degrading conditions.
According to evidence obtained, persons sentenced to death are kept in total isolation, they are forbidden to take walks, and prison staff treat them as if they are no longer "among the living". Isolation makes them especially vulnerable to physical and psychological coercion. Conditions of detention on death row have repeatedly led to suicide attempts. The bodies of the executed persons are not released to their families, and the time and place of execution as well as the place of burial are kept secret, leaving relatives in a state of uncertainty, unable even to bury the body in accordance with family traditions and beliefs.
During the CAHR Fellowship programme at the University of York, I am working on a study of the problem of the death penalty in Belarus, through the lens of the global context. I am also developing supporting materials that will allow anyone in my country to access them and, on the basis of these materials, to give lectures, start discussions, and make public speeches, thus breaking the veil of secrecy around this issue, and taking the discussion on this issue into a wider, public dialogue.
In addition, I understand perfectly well that I found myself in a unique situation by being able to participate in a programme for human rights defenders in one of the most respected and prestigious universities in the United Kingdom. I am sure that this will give me the opportunity to further improve my knowledge of English, get in touch with human rights defenders from other countries, get knowledge from some of the best teachers and professors, as well as structure my life and professional experience.
Discussing human rights issues with other fellows will provide best practices, new methods in solving problems related to human rights, and of course I plan to use these skills in my work when I return to my country.