The release of a political prisoner is usually perceived as the end of repression. A person leaves prison and is considered free. It is assumed that once isolation ends, state persecution[i] ends as well. Rights are restored, the threat of punishment disappears, and the person regains the possibility of returning to a normal life.
However, in modern authoritarian systems, release no longer necessarily means the end of state persecution. In Belarus after 2025, this became especially visible: political prisoners began to be removed from places of detention and expelled from the country without the full legal resolution of their criminal status. Formally, the person was no longer in custody, but the pressure itself did not disappear. It simply took another form.
This article examines how unresolved criminal status, the absence of documents, and continued pressure after expulsion transform release into a mechanism of transnational continuation of repression.
When Release Becomes Exile
After the 2020 elections, Belarus entered a period of deep political crisis. Mass protests triggered by distrust in the official election results became the largest in more than thirty years of Alexander Lukashenko’s rule. The state responded with mass detentions, criminal prosecutions, violent suppression of protest activity, and systematic persecution of all forms of dissent. Over the following years, tens of thousands of people passed through investigations, courts, and prisons, while the issue of political prisoners became one of the central international topics associated with Belarus.
At the same time, pressure on the Belarusian authorities intensified from international organisations, European states, and human rights groups. Many of these actors made the normalisation of relations with Belarus conditional upon ending repression and releasing political prisoners. Against this background, the Belarusian authorities began releasing selected prisoners from detention facilities. However, such cases were accompanied not by the full restoration of rights and legal status, but by the effective removal of individuals beyond the country’s borders.
Released but Not Free
The problem does not lie only in the departure itself. In many cases, release was not accompanied by the final resolution of a person’s criminal status. Formally, the individual left prison, yet the sentence itself remained in force, while the person’s legal position after release remained unresolved.
People were effectively removed from places of detention and taken beyond Belarus’s borders, yet they were not provided with documents confirming the legal basis of their release. No publicly known pardon, judicial review, or other legal act was presented that definitively terminated their criminal status. As a result, individuals found themselves physically free, but without clear confirmation of the legal grounds on which that freedom had been granted.
In democratic legal systems, release from detention marks the conclusion of criminal proceedings or the final resolution of an individual’s legal status. In Belarus, however, this mechanism operates differently. The authorities release individuals from detention and forcibly remove them beyond the country’s borders, while keeping their convictions in force and leaving their legal status unresolved. At the time of writing, at least 204 documented cases across four waves of releases and expulsions from Belarus demonstrated this pattern: the authorities released individuals but did not bring their legal cases to a full conclusion.
This left former political prisoners in an intermediate state between release and continuing persecution. They were no longer in prison, yet they did not regain a stable legal status, clear legal guarantees, or a secure position after expulsion from the country.
An additional problem is the absence of documents and verified personal records. After expulsion, many former political prisoners find themselves without the documents necessary for legalisation and rebuilding a normal life. This concerns not only passports, but also proof of education, qualifications, professional experience, employment history, and other basic records. Without them, individuals remain in a condition of prolonged administrative and social vulnerability.
Repression Continues
Relatives and property become additional instruments of pressure. Parents, spouses, children, friends, and colleagues are summoned for questioning, subjected to administrative pressure, or used as a means of influencing individuals who are already outside the country. At the same time, authorities carry out property seizures, confiscations, and the transfer of assets into state ownership.
Even after release, former political prisoners remain subject to criminal investigations, surveillance, administrative pressure, or new criminal cases related to their political, civic, human rights, media, or other public activities in exile. This pressure extends both to former political prisoners themselves and to family members, relatives, and close associates who remain in Belarus.
As a result, the end of physical isolation does not mean the end of control. The repressive system becomes less visible externally, yet it continues to operate through an unresolved criminal status, legal uncertainty, dependence on the receiving state, and the constant threat of renewed prosecution.
This creates a serious problem for the international legal assessment of such cases. International mechanisms are significantly better equipped to respond to classical forms of political persecution – unlawful detention, torture, deportation, or persecution within the country itself. However, situations in which a formally released person remains the object of continuing pressure and unresolved criminal prosecution fit far less clearly within existing legal categories.
As a result, such cases are often perceived as humanitarian releases or signs of a softening of the regime’s policies. Statistics on releases improve, creating the impression of weakening repression and a willingness to make concessions under international pressure. In reality, however, release from detention in such cases does not mean the end of the repressive mechanism itself. Only the form of its implementation changes.
This is precisely why the practice of forced expulsion through “release” requires separate consideration as an independent form of repressive practice. In such cases, release is used not to restore a person’s freedom, but as a mechanism for their controlled removal beyond the country’s borders while preserving elements of legal pressure and transferring the consequences of repression into the international sphere.
A Repressive System Without Borders
Belarus has become a particularly illustrative example of this transformation of repressive practice. It demonstrates how a modern authoritarian state can combine an unresolved criminal status, absence of documents, legal uncertainty, expulsion, pressure on relatives, digital persecution, and property confiscation within a single system of continued control after a person’s formal release.
The central effect of this mechanism is that release ceases to mean the end of repression. Instead, it becomes a way of changing its form. A person leaves prison, yet continues to remain within a system of legal, social, and psychological pressure whose reach no longer ends at the state border.
It is precisely here that the transnational character of repression becomes especially visible. The consequences of repressive policies begin to affect not only the individual, but also the receiving states. These states are forced to establish identities, verify biographical information, restore documents, determine legal grounds for residence, and provide basic integration outside the standard procedures normally used for migration or asylum.
As a result, receiving countries are compelled to assume responsibilities that would normally belong to the country of origin: identity verification, document restoration, clarification of legal status, and support for basic integration. Much of this information is either missing or requires lengthy verification and reconstruction.
In my view, this aspect often remains underestimated in discussions of such “releases.” Attention is usually focused on the fact that a person has left prison, while the long-term consequences for their legal position and for receiving states remain largely outside the discussion. This creates a challenge for international mechanisms that monitor political repression. When pressure continues after release, such cases become more difficult to identify and assess than imprisonment itself. As a result, the repressive practice no longer remains confined to the territory of the state itself. The consequences of internal persecution extend beyond national jurisdiction and are effectively transferred into the international sphere.
At the same time, the pressure does not end after departure from the country. Former political prisoners continue to face new criminal cases for political, human rights, or volunteer activities carried out in exile, inclusion on “extremist” and “terrorist” lists, wanted notices, and the impossibility of safely returning to Belarus.
[i] The term “persecution” has a specific legal meaning in international law and refugee law. In this article, I use the term in a broader sense to describe pressure that the state continues to exert on an individual after release from detention. By persecution, I mean the continued enforcement of criminal convictions, unresolved legal status, restrictions related to identity documents, pressure on relatives, the initiation of new criminal cases, attempts to secure international search notices, detention, extradition, or the return of an individual to the control of the regime, as well as the seizure, confiscation, or other deprivation of property, housing, businesses, and other assets. In other words, release does not necessarily mean the end of persecution. A state may end imprisonment while continuing to use other instruments of pressure and control.
Photo by Hédi Benyounes on Unsplash
