How we define political prisoner.
Everyone in this registry is documented under a single, centralized term: political prisoner. This page sets out what the term means here, the independent legal framework behind it, and how the definition applies in each country we cover, because the people it describes look different in each one.
The term we use
Different organizations use different labels for overlapping groups of people. We deliberately use one.
Every person in this registry is a political prisoner. We do not split the caseload into separate labels: whether someone was detained for a social media post, for their reporting, for their faith, for their business, or through a fabricated criminal case, the registry applies the same centralized term. What differs between cases is recorded as structured data (the charge, the basis of prosecution, the person’s profession, the documented conditions), not as a hierarchy of labels.
Where a source organization uses its own terminology, the case page credits and links that organization, and their classification is preserved in the citation. The standard applied on this site is ours, and it is the same for every country.
What the term means
Two elements must both be present: a deprivation of liberty, and political motivation behind it.
Imprisonment after conviction, pre-trial detention, house arrest, forced psychiatric confinement, or, in documented cases, travel bans and restrictions that amount to detention in effect. A conviction is not required: the fact of being held is.
The detention is substantially driven by political purpose rather than legitimate law enforcement: punishing expression, association, faith, profession, or perceived disloyalty; silencing scrutiny; expropriating assets; or deterring others.
The charge on paper does not decide the question. Political cases are routinely filed as fraud, tax evasion, hooliganism, drug possession, or terrorism. We assess the documented record (timing, target, proportionality, and fairness of proceedings), not the label the state chose.
An independent legal framework
Our criteria are our own. They are informed by the major international standards, but no outside organization, whether source, partner, or funder, decides who is listed here.
- a.The detention punishes the non-violent exercise of a fundamental right: freedom of thought or religion, of expression and information, or of assembly and association.
- b.The detention is imposed for purely political reasons, without connection to any genuine offence.
- c.The length or conditions of detention are clearly out of proportion to the offence charged.
- d.The person is detained in a discriminatory manner compared to others, for political motives, including by ethnicity, religion, or profession.
- e.The detention results from proceedings that were clearly unfair, and the unfairness appears connected to political motives of the authorities.
These criteria draw on PACE Resolution 1900 (2012), the Memorial guidelines on the definition of a political prisoner, and the frameworks used by Freedom House and Freedom Now. Where those standards differ, our published criteria control. Inclusion decisions are made by our editors against this page and are re-reviewed when the documented record changes.
The definition, country by country
The standard is identical everywhere; the people it describes are not. Each entry states who is being detained in that country and through which legal machinery.
WhoAnti-war speakers, journalists, lawyers, municipal deputies, religious minorities, and ordinary citizens prosecuted for online speech.
HowWar-censorship statutes ("discrediting" and "fake news" about the army), "justification of terrorism", "extremism" designations, and an expanding treason and espionage caseload. Online posts and donations are the most common factual basis.
WhoProtesters from the 2020 election period, journalists, trade unionists, volunteers, medics, and people who commented or donated online.
HowMass-riot and "extremist formation" charges, criminalized subscriptions and donations, and retroactive prosecution of 2020 protest participation identified from footage and leaked data.
WhoDemonstrators and activists detained during the 2024–2025 protest crackdowns, spanning students to pensioners.
HowAdministrative detention pipelines converted into criminal cases: group violence and assault charges arising from protest policing, applied to participants rather than organizers of violence.
WhoActivists and bloggers, participants in the January 2022 events, and members of banned opposition movements.
How"Inciting social discord", participation in banned organizations, and mass prosecutions following January 2022, where protest participation was charged as rioting.
WhoKarakalpak activists and journalists detained around the 2022 Karakalpakstan events, bloggers, and people prosecuted for religious practice.
HowConstitutional-order and mass-disturbance charges from the 2022 events, "extremist materials" prosecutions for religious content, and defamation-style charges against bloggers.
WhoBusinessmen whose assets attract expropriation, Pamiri community figures from Gorno-Badakhshan, members of the banned IRPT, journalists, and lawyers who defended them.
HowEconomic charges (fraud, tax, "organized crime") used against businessmen and community leaders, terrorism and extremism designations against the IRPT, and decades-long sentences from closed trials.
WhoJournalists and investigative outlets, bloggers, and the Kempir-Abad defendants — activists detained over opposition to a border agreement.
HowMass-riot preparation charges, "false information" laws against media, and pressure on outlets through raids, blocking, and criminal cases against staff.
Who the definition covers
Political imprisonment is not limited to activists. The registry documents every profile the definition reaches, judged by the motivation for the detention rather than the person's job title.
Detained for reporting, blogging, or media work that challenges state narratives or exposes abuse.
Detained for organizing, demonstrating, monitoring, or documenting — including retroactive prosecution years after a protest.
Prosecuted on economic charges such as fraud, tax evasion, or "organized crime" where the documented record shows expropriation of assets or punishment of perceived disloyalty rather than genuine law enforcement. An economic charge does not disqualify a case; the motivation decides it.
Detained for worship, religious study, or membership in disfavored congregations and movements.
Detained for defending political defendants, documenting abuses, or supporting victims of persecution.
Detained for social-media posts, comments, donations, or private messages. In several countries this is the largest and fastest-growing profile.
What we exclude
The definition has edges. A person is not listed, regardless of the political context of their case, when the documented record shows:
- Use or credible advocacy of violence against people. Political context does not neutralize genuine violent offences.
- Hate-motivated offences: incitement or attacks targeting people by ethnicity, religion, or other protected characteristics.
- Genuine terrorism: planning or carrying out attacks, as distinct from terrorism charges used as a label for expression or association.
Borderline cases are documented with their ambiguities stated, and a case is removed or re-classified if new evidence changes the picture. How verification works, from sources to review to corrections, is covered on the Methodology page; our process and funding on Transparency.
Treason and espionage charges
The registry contains several hundred people charged with treason, espionage, or “confidential cooperation with a foreign state.” This is why they are here.
Since 2022, Russian and Belarusian prosecutors have brought these charges in large numbers, most often against people accused of sending money to Ukraine, of passing on what they saw of troop movements, or of trying to reach Ukrainian forces. Read cold, the charge describes assisting a state at war with the prosecuting state — not obviously the profile of someone imprisoned for their beliefs. A registry that waved that away would not deserve to be believed on anything else.
So we do not wave it away, and we do not resolve it ourselves. We state plainly that we cannot know what any individual did. These trials are held behind closed doors, the evidence is classified, and the defence is frequently barred from the case file. Anyone claiming to have established the underlying facts from outside that process — in either direction — is overstating what they know.
The standard, and why guilt is not the test
The organizations that maintain these lists apply the Guidelines on the Definition of Political Prisoner (2013), drafted by human rights defenders from seven countries to develop the approach approved by PACE Resolution 1900 (2012). Under §3.2, a person prosecuted for political reasons is a political prisoner if the detention violated the right to a fair trial, rested on falsified evidence or on the absence of an element of the offence, was clearly disproportionate to the offence alleged, or was applied discriminatorily.
The Guidelines are explicit that the test does not turn on innocence. The commentary to §3.2(c) applies “no matter what kind of offense they committed or whether an offence was committed or not”; on §3.2(d), “it is immaterial whether the person is in fact guilty.”
The exclusion in §3.3 still binds: a person who committed a violent offence against someone, or a hate crime, or who called for violence on national, ethnic, racial or religious grounds, is not a political prisoner — whether or not those acts formed part of the charges. And the remedy attached to a §3.2 case is a fair trial and a review of the proceedings, not automatic release. Documenting a treason case here is a demand for that review. It is not a claim that nothing happened.
What each case page has to show
Every case carrying one of these charges displays a notice naming which organization designated the person a political prisoner and reproducing that organization’s published reasoning verbatim, in its own language, with a link. Where a designating organization published case-specific grounds — Memorial, for instance, ends each dossier with a section headed «Основания признания политзаключённым» — that section is shown in full rather than summarized.
Where no designation exists — the case reached us through journalism about the prosecution and no political-prisoner list has been found carrying the person — the notice says exactly that, and the case is treated as a recorded prosecution pending confirmation rather than as anyone’s designation. Quotations describing the alleged conduct and any reported fair-trial defects are extracted from the source text and machine-checked against it, so a quotation on a case page can always be found in the document it cites.