The NAM team held a roundtable on universal jurisdiction in Lithuania
During the round table a working group was created, which included experts and lawyers of the NAM, the Office of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the Human Rights Center "Viasna", the International Committee for the Investigation of Torture in Belarus, foreign human rights activists, as well as activists of the Belarusian diaspora.
Angelika Melnikova, project coordinator:
"It was a very productive working meeting where my colleagues and I approved a joint plan and concrete steps to achieve the common goal as soon as possible — to bring to justice those who used torture in Belarus, gave or executed criminal orders. We understand that we want to see results right now. But we have to take into account that the mechanisms of application of the principles of universal jurisdiction are quite complicated and huge efforts have to be made and the involvement of the expert community to ensure the possibility of prosecuting criminals without disclosing data of the victims to the Belarusian side — as the party responsible for the violence".
For security reasons and to achieve maximum efficiency, we do not publish the results of the meeting and do not cover the details of the adopted action plan.
We remind victims who have been tortured in Belarus and now live in one of the countries signed the Convention against Torture that they may apply to the Human Rights Center "Viasna" (viasnadoc@spring96.org), the International Committee against Torture or to our feedback bot @nau_by_bot to participate in the project. We guarantee complete confidentiality of received information.
Activities to prosecute the Lukashenko regime under universal jurisdiction have been identified as one of the key priorities of the United Transitional Cabinet's power transit representative Pavel Latushka.