How Lukashenka uses healthcare against political prisoners

The International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners in Belarus is marked on 21 May. There are currently more than 1,180 political prisoners in the country, and more than 6,940 people have been sentenced in politically-motivated criminal cases.

Behind bars, people who have shown resistance to Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s regime face inhumane conditions designed to break their spirit and ruin their health. Some are denied or cannot receive necessary medical care. Others are deliberately left to deteriorate. Just yesterday, rights campaigners found out that political prisoner Valentin Shtermer has died behind bars in unclear circumstances.

The date to show solidarity is dedicated to political prisoner and activist Vitold Ashurak, who died in prison in 2021 under unclear circumstances. His body was reportedly returned to his family with his head bandaged, raising serious suspicions about the cause of death.

Another tragic case occurred in July 2023, when political prisoner, famous Belarusian artist Ales Pushkin, died in intensive care after being transferred there directly from prison. According to Belarusian independent media, Pushkin had an ulcer that was not treated in time and developed sepsis, leading to multiple organ failure.

According to the Viasna Human Rights Center, political prisoners Mikalai Klimovich, Aliaksandr Kulinich, Ihar Lednik, Vadzim Khrasko and Dzmitry Shlethauer also died in detention. Recently, Hanna Kandratsenka and Tamara Karavai died soon after their release from unjust sentences – their health deteriorated in prison.

Clearly, lack of proper medical care is a tool to pressure political prisoners. One disturbing example is the case of Maryia Kalesnikava, one of the leaders of the democratic movement, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison. After spending several days in a punishment cell, she was eventually hospitalised with a perforated ulcer and peritonitis. She underwent surgery and lost a lot of weight, but was later returned to forced labour and denied proper aftercare.

The way Lukashenka’s regime holds people hostage and allows the system to operate with such lawlessness and inhumanity is chilling – especially when it comes to people who have been kept completely incommunicado for more than two years. The politician considered by many as the president-elect of Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, often says that she doesn’t even know if her husband Siarhei (an opposition politician who was arrested) is alive.

According to Viasna, at least 206 political prisoners are at increased risk, with 77 of those having physical health issues and others facing disabilities, mental illnesses or advanced age. These numbers show just how widespread the issue is – and how urgently healthcare is needed.

Leanid Sudalenka, a Belarusian human rights defender and chairman of the Gomel branch of Viasna, was himself a political prisoner and was released in 2023 after serving his sentence (he’s now been sentenced to a further five years in absentia). In his mind, this failure or inadequate provision of medical care is a form of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.

“First of all, courts in Belarus do not consider the health conditions of those convicted under so-called extremist or terrorist articles of the criminal code,” he said.

He went on to describe how he suffers from diabetes. “The person in judicial robes did not ‘find’ even a single day of leniency for my illness, although they had every legal right to consider it a mitigating factor. As a result, I served the full term without ever being able to measure my blood sugar levels,” he said.

Inside prison, he witnessed a terrible situation for people in critical conditions: “Even when cancer is diagnosed there, prisoners are not released from their sentences – they die right there in their prison beds.”

Kseniya Lutskina, a journalist and released political prisoner, has a brain tumour. The regime took her pro-democratic activism very personally – Lutskina was a state TV journalist who joined the media workers’ strike in 2020 after the fraudulent election. She was sentenced to eight years, but in August 2024, she was “pardoned”. While in pre-trial detention under criminal charges and already suffering from her condition, she was told directly: You will die in prison.”

Lutskina shared her experience with Index, describing how access to medical care in pre-trial detention is extremely limited, and that no proper diagnostics can be carried out at this point.

“The doctors there – often just general practitioners – simply don’t have the tools, resources, or authority to provide proper treatment. Their role is mostly limited to emergency care,” she said.

“In some cases, if medical documents can be provided from outside, the detainee may be allowed to receive specific medications. But this requires confirmed diagnoses; otherwise, even getting basic treatment becomes a bureaucratic impossibility.”

She said that for detainees with serious health conditions, it can be nearly impossible to get what they need.

“When political prisoners begin to deteriorate – and many inevitably develop health problems – they are often only treated for symptoms, to the extent possible,” she explained. “It’s not entirely accurate to say there is no medical care, but it is extremely limited and deeply inadequate for serious conditions”.

Lutskina told Index about the harsh environment of prison labour, especially for women. With her formal diagnosis, rather than being exempted from work, she was reassigned to a different type of labour where she didn’t operate heavy machinery.

“But if I fail to meet the daily quota, I’ll be sent back there, to the machines. So, regardless of how you feel – sick or well – you’re still expected to work,” she said.

Even with a medical exemption against carrying heavy weight, this was never guaranteed.

In colonies, prisoners are forced to work, and that labour is physical and often very hard. Health issues are not acknowledged until they become critical. Sudalenka described how the prison administration only pays attention to a prisoner’s health once they faint.

“In that case, they’re wrapped in a blanket and carried to the medical unit. This is especially true for political prisoners, who are not excused from work even with a fever,” he said.

He told Index about the attitude of medical staff towards inmates.

“When I was thrown into a cold punishment cell, where it was impossible to sleep at night due to the cold, I voiced my complaints during a medical personnel round. ‘If you get sick, we’ll treat you,’ they replied – and walked away.”

He said he witnessed a middle-aged man fall ill at the workshop and ask to go to the medical unit. He was told that visits to the doctor are only allowed outside working hours. The prisoner collapsed, and it turned out to be a stroke.

“One of the gravest problems in the Belarusian penitentiary system is the lack of proper diagnostics. This results in frequent – very frequent – deaths,” he said. “And while cancer deaths are somewhat explainable, how do you explain what happened in our colony when a 35-year-old man went to bed after lights out and never woke up? By morning, his body was already cold.”

Healthcare is a basic human right. But in Lukashenka’s Belarus – where the crackdown on pro-democracy resistance has led to a massive increase in human rights violations since 2020 – it has become another means of punishment against dissent.

To find out more about how health is weaponised against political prisoners, explore our Spring 2025 magazine: The forgotten patients: Lost voices in the global healthcare system.

Ten years in Saudi prison for a tweet

“Saudi Arabia criticised for ignoring the USA’s appalling human rights record” – that was the headline on satirical website News Thump, spoofing this week’s arms deal between the two countries. In these bleak times, I’ll take laughter where I can get it. But behind the joke is a darker truth: the USA’s steady backslide on human rights and Saudi Arabia’s ongoing abuses. This week, it’s Saudi Arabia that demands our attention.

Make no mistake – the petrostate is having a great week (at the top, that is). As is often the case, the good news for the elite rests on suffering at the bottom – and stories the government would rather you didn’t hear. On Wednesday, both Human Rights Watch and FairSquare sounded the alarm over a “surge” in migrant construction worker deaths, as Saudi Arabia ramps up preparations to host the 2034 World Cup. The reports are grim. There have already been fatalities, but pinning down exact numbers is nearly impossible: independent media are muzzled and labour unions banned.

We’ve been here before, with Qatar in 2022. This time we can only hope that speaking up early actually prompts change. We won’t hold our breath though. As our own investigation Oiling the Wheels of Injustice made clear, Saudi Arabia has very successfully thrown money at its image while its human rights record has tumbled.

But perhaps the most pressing story for Index this week is that of British father of four, Ahmed al-Doush. He’s just been sentenced to 10 years in a Riyadh court, allegedly for a tweet he posted seven years ago related to Sudan, which provided military support for Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and for his association with a Saudi critic in exile. He reportedly later deleted the tweet.

He was arrested last August when on holiday with his family. Saudi Arabia has form here: in 2021 Leeds University student Salma al-Shehab was detained during a visit to Saudi Arabia because of social media activity. She was handed a 34-year sentence in 2022 before being released earlier this year, following pressure from several advocacy groups, including Index.

We’ve now written to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, urging him to intervene in al-Doush’s case. Al-Doush has already missed the birth of his fourth child. His wife, Nour, says he’s in poor health due to a thyroid condition, raising serious concerns about his access to medical care.’

“The night times are the hardest for me when I’m alone and it’s quiet,” Nour told the Sunday Times ahead of her husband’s trial. Our message to her: Index is here to counter the quiet, and we will try as hard as we can to help get your husband released.

The week in free expression: 10–16 May 2025

In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index publishes a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression. This week, we look at the potential suspension of three Māori MPs, and the dissolution of political parties in Mali.

Cultural suspension: Māori MPs face suspension for performing the Haka in parliament

In November 2024, an act of protest in New Zealand’s parliament went viral on social media when opposition MP Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke initiated a traditional Haka dance during session to demonstrate against a controversial bill concerning Māori people’s rights. Opposition party members joined in the ceremonial group dance, leading to a striking scene in which a copy of the bill was ripped in two.

The bill aimed to drastically change the way that the Treaty of Waitangi, a founding document of New Zealand that has been crucial in upholding Māori rights, was interpreted. Critics and Māori rights activists claimed that this bill undermined New Zealand’s founding document – and following a nine-day hīkoi (peaceful protest) last year, the bill was voted down in April. But the MPs that spoke out against the bill in parliament haven’t escaped unscathed.

Three members of opposition party Te Pāti Māori (The Māori Party) are expected to be suspended for performing the Haka, in what has been described as the harshest punishment ever proposed on MPs in the country. A parliamentary committee recommended the suspensions, arguing that the Haka could have “intimidated” fellow MPs, while a Te Pāti Māori spokesperson described the punishment as a “warning shot to all of us to fall in line”. Maipi-Clarke is due to be suspended for a week, while the party’s co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer will be banned for 21 days.

The party’s over: Political parties in Mali dissolved in latest crackdown on democracy 

Since a military junta took control of Mali in 2021 via a coup led by Colonel Assimi Goita, democracy has all but disappeared in the Sahel nation. Goita promised to hold elections in the year following his ascendancy to head of state, but has backed out of this commitment, instead holding onto power and recently gained backing to be declared president until at least 2030 – a move denounced by opposition parties. 

But now, these parties won’t be able to denounce any further decisions made by the junta, as Goita has announced that all political parties were dissolved as of 13 May. Members of these parties have been banned from organising or holding any meetings.

This move is the latest escalation from a nation becoming increasingly repressive. Opposition leader Mamadou Traoré was arrested and imprisoned in April, and two further opposition leaders went missing last week and are feared forcibly disappeared. Protests took place in the capital Bamako last week, marking the first major pro-democracy demonstration since the military originally took control of Mali in 2020. These protests have not been tolerated, with the junta attempting to ban future demonstrations “for reasons of public order”. 

 A crackdown on journalists: Azerbaijan detains two independent journalists

Ilham Aliyev has been president of Azerbaijan since 2003, and his tenure has been marred by repeated attacks on the media. The nation ranks 167 out of 180 nations in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, and in recent years has ramped up its efforts to smother independent reporting and detain journalists on trumped up charges. In the latest continuation of these efforts, two of the country’s few remaining independent journalists – Ulviyya Ali and Ahmad Mammadli – were detained on 6 and 7 May.

Ali was seemingly expecting her imminent detention. Having seen many of her contemporaries detained for their work, she preemptively wrote a letter to be published online in the case of her arrest. According to reporting by Le Monde, upon her arrest, Ali was allegedly beaten and threatened with rape by a police officer. Some have posited that Ali, who frequently worked for Voice of America, became more vulnerable following the forced closure of the US-funded media outlet’s operations by the Donald Trump administration. 

Mammadli, who documented labour rights violations and political repression online, was arrested over an alleged stabbing – a charge his colleagues claim is politically motivated – and according to his wife, was beaten and tortured with electroshocks by police after refusing to unlock his phone. These two arrests bring the total number of journalists jailed in Azerbaijan to 25 since late 2023.

Social media shutdown: The Taliban targets content creators

The Taliban is implementing a large-scale crackdown on social media influencers in the country, particularly on platforms such as TikTok.

Two teenage influencers have been detained by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice for taking part in TikTok live broadcasts with women content creators from abroad, a practice denounced by the Taliban for being “un-Islamic”. Ministry spokesperson Saif Khyber has issued a warning that the ministry is surveilling public profiles for activity it deems to be immoral, and released two videos in which the TikTokers expressed regret and remorse for their content. Some have speculated that these videos may have been recorded under duress.

One of the TikTokers, Haroon Pakora, had been vocal about living in poverty before he gained fame on TikTok through street interviews in Kabul, but it is unlikely that he will continue posting on the platform.

A documentary withheld: BBC under fire for delaying release of Gaza documentary

Over 600 film industry professionals and members, including notable figures such as Miriam Margolyes, Susan Sarandon and Frankie Boyle, have accused the BBC of censoring Palestinian voices and have signed an open letter urging the organisation to release a Gaza documentary that has been withheld from broadcast.

Gaza: Medics Under Fire includes accounts from frontline health workers in Gaza and documents attacks on hospitals and medical clinics. According to the signatories, it has been ready to air for months, having undergone extensive fact checks and reviews. The BBC has claimed that the delay to Medics Under Fire has been extended due to its investigation into another documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone, which began after the narrator was revealed to be the son of a Hamas agriculture minister. The documentary was initially broadcast, then swiftly withdrawn.

The hold-up of the Medics Under Fire documentary, which was originally due to be broadcast in January, has drawn ire towards the BBC, with the open letter stating that “this is not editorial caution. It’s political suppression”, and suggesting the delay is “rooted in racism”. Some of the signatories were BBC employees, and a BBC spokesperson has stated that the film will be released “as soon as possible”. As of yet, there is no timeline for broadcast.

A letter to David Lammy on the imprisonment of Ahmed al-Doush

This letter was sent to UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Wednesday 14 May 2025, urging action on the case of British citizen Ahmed al-Doush and his imprisonment in Saudi Arabia over a seven-year-old tweet.

Re: Urgent Diplomatic Intervention – Unjust Imprisonment of Ahmed al-Doush in Saudi Arabia

Dear Foreign Secretary,

I am writing to you with deep concern regarding the case of Mr. Ahmed al-Doush, a British resident from Manchester, who has just been jailed for 10 years in Saudi Arabia, allegedly over a tweet he posted seven years ago.

Mr. al-Doush, a 41-year-old father of four and banking business analyst, has already spent nine months in al-Hair Prison in Riyadh prior to this sentencing. According to his family, Mr. al-Doush has done nothing to warrant such harsh punishment and appears to have been targeted simply for the peaceful expression of his views – a fundamental human right enshrined in both international and UK laws and a value the United Kingdom stands for. His wife has also said that he is in poor health. 

This case once again raises serious concerns about the safety and rights of UK residents abroad, something we have highlighted in the cases of Jimmy Lai and Alaa Abd El-Fattah. We urge the FCDO to take immediate steps to support Mr. al-Doush. 

We respectfully call on the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office to:

  1. Publicly demand the immediate release of Ahmed al-Doush, highlighting the unjust nature of his detention and sentencing.
  2. Provide Mr. al-Doush with full consular support, including legal assistance and regular welfare and health checks.

The United Kingdom has a responsibility to stand up for the rights of those it represents. We urge you not to allow this grave injustice to go unchallenged.

We thank you in advance for your attention to this urgent matter and I look forward to your prompt action.

Yours sincerely,
Jemimah Steinfeld

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