The UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Belarus says the country’s “already dire” human rights situation has deteriorated further over the last year, amid a widening crackdown on civil society ahead of a presidential election. “The systemic and systematic human rights violations remain, both in law and in practice,” Anais Marin said on July 10 as she presented her annual report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Marin expressed concerns that the Belarusian government uses restrictive laws and arbitrary administrative and judicial measures to penalize dissent. On July 1, Marin joined other UN independent experts in urging the Belarusian government to abandon its “policy of arbitrary arrests, violence, and intimidation” against political activists, rights defenders, journalists, and bloggers ahead of the August 9 presidential election, in which President Alyaksandr Lukashenka is seeking a sixth term.