Release Without Freedom: Forced Expulsion of Political Prisoners and Legal Vacuum in the Republic of Belarus. Limits of the Applicability of Humanitarian and Human Rights Guarantees under the Persistence of a Repressive Regime

This report analyses a practice that emerged in 2025 in the Republic of Belarus, within which political prisoners are removed from places of detention without any legal termination of criminal prosecution and are subsequently expelled from the country. The report demonstrates that this practice does not constitute release in the legal sense, but rather represents a specific form of coercion based on the preservation of the legal uncertainty of the persons released.Persons subjected to this mechanism are released without the annulment of their sentence, without the termination of criminal proceedings, and without any formal determination of their legal status following release. As a result, they remain in a condition of undefined criminal status established by the existing legal framework.Based on documented cases, the report demonstrates that the subsequent forced expulsion is not an accidental consequence of release but constitutes its functional purpose. Release is used as a technical stage of a softer form of coercion aimed at the departure from the country of politically undesirable persons through threats of renewed detention, pressure to leave the country, deprivation of documents, and organized escort to state borders.The report identifies three successive waves of the application of this practice in 2025, affecting approximately two hundred individuals, which indicates its reproducible and coordinated character.The analytical report, prepared on 20 December 2025 and published on 31 January 2026, documented the existence of this practice and provided its initial analytical description. On 3 February 2026, a conceptual model of this phenomenon was formulated.On 6 February 2026, the report of the Group of Independent Experts of the Human Rights Council on the situation of human rights in Belarus (A/HRC/61/57) was published, which documented similar practices in a broader context of repression, forced exile and restrictions on freedom of movement.The present research series proposes an analytical interpretation of this phenomenon, conceptualizing it as a structured mechanism of forced expulsion through “release”, within which release functions as a structural element of the expulsion mechanism while preserving the legal uncertainty of the persons released.From the perspective of international law, this practice affects fundamental human rights guarantees, including the principle of legal certainty, the prohibition of arbitrary expulsion, and the right to return to one’s own country.This document forms part of the research series “Forced Expulsion through ‘Release’.” Recommended citation (research series):Baradzin, Oleg (2026).Forced Expulsion through “Release”: Conceptual and Analytical Foundations of the Study.Research Series.Recommended citation (this report):Baradzin, Oleg (2026).Release without Freedom: Forced Expulsion of Political Prisoners and the Creation of a Legal Vacuum in the Republic of Belarus. The Limits of the Application of Humanitarian and Human Rights Guarantees under Conditions of the Preservation of a Repressive Regime.Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18444848⁠