The extremism machine

Belarus rewrote how it jails dissenters without writing new laws. In 2020 almost no one was charged as an “extremist.” By 2025, three in four documented arrests were — a wholesale shift from public-order charges to national-security law.

The sentence lottery

Same charge, same year, different judge — a different life. Across documented Belarusian political cases, identically charged defendants drew sentences years apart depending on which judge heard the case. When we reshuffled judges at random five hundred times, a spread this large never appeared once.

Jailed for words, not the street

Women are a small share of Belarus’s documented political prisoners — but those who are jailed are overwhelmingly prosecuted for journalism and online speech, and almost never for street protest.