Citizens and civil society critical of the Belarussian authorities face worsening repression, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment and harassment, nearly four years since widespread public protests took place surrounding the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko, a UN independent human rights expert said on Wednesday.

In her final, annual report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Special Rapporteur on the rights situation in Belarus, Anaïs Marin, echoed wider, longstanding concerns from the UN and the international community about a crackdown on democratic freedoms and other serious rights abuses in the country.