Belarusian authorities launch new criminal cases against Our House human rights defenders.
New criminal cases have been opened in Belarus against Olga Karach and other activists of the Our House Human Rights Centre for participating in a so-called ‘extremist formation’. Olga Karach and the other human rights defenders face up to seven additional years in prison. Searches have already been carried out in apartments across Belarus as part of this persecution.
We have not forgotten about the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs. And, as it turns out, the Ministry has not forgotten about us either.
Apparently, the Belarusian Interior Ministry is gradually running out of our websites, social media accounts, YouTube channels and information platforms that it has yet to declare ‘extremist’. So the Ministry has decided to take bureaucratic creativity to the next level: discovering the actual human rights defenders inside an organisation that has existed for more than twenty years.
As a reminder, on 4 May 2022, by Decision No. 20EK, the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs designated the Our House Human Rights Centre a so-called ‘extremist formation’.
Four years later, however, that apparently proved insufficient. On 1 September 2026, the Ministry adopted a new decision, No. 16EK, expressly naming five people as belonging to Our House: Olga Karach, Sergei Sparysh, Vyacheslav Andreev, Ekaterina Maminova and Viktoria Laikova. This was Decision No. 16EK of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Belarus, dated 1 September 2026, ‘On Amendments and Additions to an Extremist Formation’.
And this is where things get interesting.
It took the Belarusian Interior Ministry almost 24 years to establish that Olga Karach has something to do with Our House.
For those unfamiliar with our work, Our House has existed in Belarus since December 2002. During that time, the organisation has pursued thousands of court cases involving state bodies and officials. In some years alone, Our House was involved in 200 to 300 legal proceedings.
Over the years, we have prepared thousands of petitions, statements, complaints, analytical reports and public interventions addressed to a wide range of Belarusian state institutions. Our House TV has accumulated more than 43 million views on YouTube, with thousands of interviews, investigations and other videos published.
And throughout all those years, we made absolutely no secret of who we were, what we did or who represented our organisation.
Yet it was only in September 2026 that the Belarusian Interior Ministry, having evidently conducted an enormous investigative operation and spent substantial public funds, finally identified five people associated with Our House.
And among them — surprise! — was Olga Karach. Who would have thought it?
Yes, the very same Olga Karach who helped establish Our House in 2002 and has publicly represented the organisation ever since.
We were almost overwhelmed by the sheer scale of this discovery. Did it really take twenty-four years, an entire ministry and a formally numbered decision to establish this fact?
What interested us most, however, was the Ministry’s wording.
The Belarusian Interior Ministry has effectively decided that it is entitled to determine who belongs to our organisation.
Let us make one thing clear: the Ministry did not establish Our House, build its team, recruit its activists or determine its organisational structure. It therefore has no authority to control our membership, admit anyone to our organisation or expel anyone from it.
That is simply not its remit.
There is something particularly absurd about the attempt to ‘admit’ people administratively to Our House when they have already been active in it for many years.
Imagine a government department solemnly informing the founders of an organisation, two decades after its establishment, that they have now officially been discovered inside their own organisation.
We are, of course, grateful for the Ministry’s close interest in our staffing arrangements. But we must break some disappointing news to it: we know perfectly well who works with Our House, and we do not require the Belarusian police to help us work that out.
But the bureaucratic imagination did not stop there.
Following this remarkable discovery, the Belarusian Interior Ministry initiated new criminal cases against Olga Karach and the other named Our House human rights defenders. In other words, a fresh round of criminal prosecution followed for participation in an organisation with which none of us has ever concealed our association. All five of the named human rights defenders now face an additional seven years in prison in Belarus.
This raises an entirely reasonable question: what exactly were the relevant Interior Ministry departments doing all these years, if establishing facts that were already public knowledge took them more than two decades?
We are beginning to suspect that the Belarusian Interior Ministry has developed a special system for producing reports, in which long-established facts are periodically repackaged as new operational achievements, while human rights defenders already facing persecution become defendants in yet more criminal cases.
Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why, 24 years after the establishment of a public human rights organisation, a separate decision was needed to confirm that one of its founders was indeed associated with it.
Yet behind this bureaucratic comedy lies a reality that is anything but funny.
New criminal cases are opened, homes are searched, pressure on activists and their loved ones intensifies, and years of open human rights work are used as grounds for further criminal charges.
The Belarusian state is effectively turning the very act of participating in an independent human rights organisation into grounds for criminal prosecution.
And this is where the satire ends and the question of political repression in Belarus begins.
We categorically reject the notion that the Belarusian Interior Ministry has the right to determine the composition of independent civic associations, let alone criminalise their activities solely through ministerial decisions.
Our House existed long before these decisions, continues to exist today, will continue its work tomorrow, and has absolutely no need for the Belarusian Interior Ministry’s permission to operate.
As for the Ministry officials who have finally discovered Olga Karach inside Our House after 24 years, we can share one more piece of information that may make their future work considerably easier.
Olga Karach is not merely associated with Our House. She was one of the people who founded it.
That is no secret either.
And establishing that fact does not require opening yet another criminal case or spending millions from Belarusian taxpayers’ money.
All they had to do was visit any of our information platforms and read.
Sources:
Interior Ministry clarifies membership of ‘extremist formation’ Our House | Pozirk
