UN expert likens Belarus to ‘totalitarian’ states

Special Rapporteur Anais Marin warns Human Rights Council that Minsk is moving to ‘purge’ Belarus of all dissent.

A top UN expert has likened Belarus to “totalitarian states”, warning that Minsk’s recent grounding of a passenger plane and subsequent arrest of an opposition journalist on board was part of an ongoing effort by officials to “purge” the country of all dissent. Anais Marin, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on the rights situation in the country, told the Human Rights Council on Monday the incident in May “illustrates the desire of authorities to end all forms of dissidence by purging society of elements it considers undesirable”. “It is a form of purge that recalls those practised by totalitarian states,” she said in a speech at the Geneva-based forum.