Research into the long-term consequences of political persecution and migration

Research objectives

  • Compare the mental and physical health of political refugees and migrants who were not subjected to criminal political persecution.

  • Assess their adaptation to new countries in the social, employment, and family spheres.

  • Study the features of PTSD and the difficulties political refugees face, through interviews.

Key findings

A cross-sectional study of 77 former political prisoners after release and forced migration: torture and ill-treatment in detention.

  • 77former political prisoners in the sample
  • 30 mo.median imprisonment
  • 85.7%faced violence at arrest
  • 3 mo.median time from release to emigration
  • 88.3%reported physical torture or physical ill-treatment
  • 98.6%reported psychological torture or psychological ill-treatment
  • 54.8%reported 10 or more forms of psychological abuse
  • 52.1%experienced punitive isolation
  • 30.1%reported suicidal thoughts in custody
  • 12.3%reported self-harm in custody

Most severe stressor

Loneliness and separation from relatives

Participants ranked it highest.

Violence was most often perceived as a way to

  • humiliate the person81.9%
  • force submission and suppress the person80.6%
Illustration: barbed wire

Research protocol

17 February 2025

The final version of the study protocol has been developed
View the protocol

2 March 2025

Added a study protocol in easy-to-read format
Protocol in EnglishProtocol in RussianProtocol in Belarusian

Active phase

9 March 2025

The active phase of conducting the research and searching for respondents

Number of participants:

76 adults (≥18 years old), Belarusian women who survived imprisonment following the 2020 protests and currently live outside of Belarus.

Data collection:

February–May 2025, anonymous online questionnaire distributed through partner organizations and snowball sampling.

Data collected:

sociodemographic characteristics, circumstances of persecution, standardized test scores.

Analysis

27 April 2025

Preparing the collected data for analysis and studying the obtained materials

Conclusion on the standards of ethics and safety of research involving human subjects

11 May 2025

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań's opinion on research ethics and safety standards
Go to the conclusion

Publication

1 October 2026

Publication in Torture Journal

Publication of the first part of the study in the journal Torture Journal

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