Human rights NGOs are systematically denied registration, while the Criminal Code criminalises members of non-registered groups. According to Article 193-1 of the Criminal Code, the “illegal organisation or activities of public associations, religious groups or foundations or participation in their activities” is punishable with six months to two years in prison. Legislative amendments passed in 2011 made it illegal for NGOs to hold funds abroad and established criminal liability for receiving foreign grants or donations ‘in violation of the Belarusian legislation’. These changes were adopted in connection with the case of prominent human rights defender Ales Bialiatski, arrested in August 2011 on trumped up charges of tax evasion and sentenced in November 2011 to four and a half years of imprisonment and confiscation of his properties. Widespread impunity for law enforcement officers contributed to an increase in human rights violations including the use of torture in detention against political opponents and human rights defenders. Human rights lawyers were disbarred because they represented detained opposition activists, denounced their conditions of detention and the violation of fair trial guarantees. Demonstrators were arrested en masse. The human rights community was branded as politically motivated and accused of being the conduit of western funding to domestic ‘radical opposition’. Throughout 2011 and 2012, it was subjected to repression on an unprecedented scale: arrests, searches at home and in the office, confiscation of electronic devices and documents, police surveillance and an intense smear campaign on state-owned media became a daily occurrence. The authorities continued to ban peaceful demonstrations for spurious reasons, to disperse unauthorised demonstrations and arrest people who take part in such demonstrations. The Law on Mass Actions provides local authorities with the right to decide on the date, time and place of any public actions, and to identify places where demonstrations cannot take place. This power was used arbitrarily to hide public actions and protests from the public attention: in most Belarusian towns, demonstrations cannot be held in the city centre. Participants to unauthorised demonstrations were systematically condemned to administrative arrest or fines. Since March 2012, travel bans were imposed on several prominent human rights defenders, who for several years faced administrative impediments while attempting to restore their right to freedom of movement. Administrative detention was used regularly to silence individual protesters, journalists and human rights defenders.