Belarus's President Alexander Lukashenko in Jakarta on July 2. He has openly bragged about his efforts to silence dissent, telling a news conference in January, 2025, that 'prison is for people who have opened their mouths too wide and who have broken the law.'YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images
Belarusians living in Canada who criticize the authoritarian Lukashenko government that rules their homeland are facing retaliation from Minsk, according to a new report on transnational repression.
The report, published by the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) of the Atlantic Council, a U.S. think tank, documents cases among the Belarusian community in Alberta.
One Canadian resident identified only as “Sara” – her name is withheld because of the risk of retaliation – received a message in August, 2025, that her apartment in Belarus had been seized by the government, according to the report. A former neighbour in Belarus contacted her via Telegram to say an official seal had been placed across the door of an apartment she owned there. There was no explanation provided, nor option for appeal.
“Its purpose was clear: the Belarusian state was using the seizure of private property to punish Sara’s pro-democracy activism in Canada and to signal that her actions abroad carried consequences at home,” the report said.
Sara, a Belarusian community organizer in Alberta, subsequently withdrew from public advocacy and deleted political content from her social media accounts out of concern for her family’s safety.
She and others believe photographs from public events, including a March 25, 2025, Belarusian Freedom Day gathering in Alberta, were used to identify those targeted by Minsk.
Belarusian ruler Alexander Lukashenko, who held onto power in 2020 despite what Canada and many Western countries consider a fraudulent election, is dependent on Russia for economic and security aid, and played a significant role in helping Moscow organize its 2022 military assault on neighbouring Ukraine.
Mr. Lukashenko has openly bragged about his efforts to silence dissent, telling a news conference in January, 2025, that “prison is for people who have opened their mouths too wide and who have broken the law.”
Belarusian Freedom Day, which marks the Belarusian state’s 1918 declaration of independence, is celebrated annually by opponents of the Lukashenko regime around the world.
Sara told DFRLab at least six Belarusian-Canadian organizers had property in Belarus seized in August, 2025.
Belarus closed its embassy in Canada in 2021.
Belarus’s central law enforcement agency, the Investigative Committee, publicly confirmed in an August, 2025, statement that authorities had seized assets belonging to foreign-based critics. It said investigators had located assets belonging to Belarusians living abroad in Canada, the United States, Lithuania, Britain and Poland, and had ordered searches and seizures, with further legal proceedings under consideration. Individuals abroad accused of extremist activities by Belarusian authorities face sentencing in absentia to as much as seven years in prison and fines of up to US$750,000.
A second Canadian case outlined in the report, involving an Alberta resident identified as “Barys,” went further than Sara’s.
In early August, 2025, two people showed up at the home of one of Barys’ relatives in Belarus, according to the report. One identified himself as a government agent. They demanded access to Barys’ apartment, took the relative’s phone and began reading through her private Telegram messages with Barys. Officials questioned a money transfer – a birthday gift Barys had sent – and suggested it could be linked to extremism or terrorism. They also seized personal photographs and documents. No formal charges were ever communicated to Barys. His relative was left shaken, according to the report.
Both Sara and Barys trace the campaigns against them to the same source: their activism with a Belarusian diaspora group formed in Alberta after the country’s disputed 2020 election.
They are not alone. The Belarusian human rights group Viasna says at least 207 people who attended Belarusian Freedom Day events in Canada, the U.S., Britain, Poland and Lithuania have been identified by Belarusian authorities and charged with facilitating extremist activities. Investigators have accused participants of backing the violent overthrow of the constitutional order through the use of extremist symbols – a likely reference to the red-and-white flag associated with Belarus’s opposition, according to Viasna.
Barys kept organizing but limited contact with relatives in Belarus to reduce the risk to them; some friends there have since distanced themselves from him, wary that even the association could draw attention from authorities.
2025: Belarus’ Lukashenko heads for massive win in election scorned by the West
Belarus has been under mounting international scrutiny since 2020. Freedom House, a U.S. human rights think tank, rates the country “Not Free,” citing more than 1,100 political prisoners and over 8,000 politically motivated convictions since the disputed election. An estimated 500,000 to 600,000 Belarusians have fled the country in recent years.
“Authoritarian regimes don’t spend this kind of time and energy on communities that don’t matter. They target what they fear: organization, visibility, solidarity, memory. A Belarusian community group in Alberta becomes a target because it’s making an impact,” the report said.
Canada has a National Counter Foreign Interference Coordinator, a position created in 2023 within Public Safety Canada, whose mandate includes engagement with communities at risk of transnational repression.
But there is no single office or agency responsible specifically for receiving and coordinating complaints from individuals in Canada facing repression from other nation’s governments, the DFRLab report says. A person targeted this way may not know whether to contact local police, the RCMP, CSIS, Global Affairs Canada or a lawyer, and police have sometimes treated such cases as private family disputes or civil property matters rather than as co-ordinated foreign pressure campaigns.
The DFRLab report calls on Ottawa to create a dedicated co-ordinator for transnational repression cases, separate from the existing foreign interference office, along with sanctions against Belarusian officials involved in the seizures and prosecutions.
The 2021 census found 18,850 people in Canada reporting Belarusian ancestry or origin.