Negotiations failed. Entrepreneurs to take to October Square on 10 January

Alyaksandr Kalinouski, head of the department on business of the committee on economy at the Minsk city executive committee, said on the meeting with entrepreneurs’ leaders that the decree № 760, discriminating rights of entrepreneurs, wouldn’t be changed. According to the official, it was a will of head of state and no correction of the decree is possible. The entrepreneurs left the building of the committee in protest. As entrepreneurs’ leader Alyaksandr Makayeu said to the Charter’97 press center, individual entrepreneurs would go on strike from 1 January, and take to October (Kastrychnitskaya) Square in Minsk on 10 January.

As it is known, participants of the demonstration of entrepreneurs on 10 December accepted a resolution expressing protest against the decree № 760, according to which individual entrepreneurs can employ only close relatives form 1 January, 2008. The demand to the government to fulfil 12 offers of the EU, including respect the rights of Belarusian citizens to impartial judicial system and the rights for entrepreneurial activity without excessive intervention by the authorities, was submitted. The entrepreneurs’ leader called all individual entrepreneurs to hold an all-republican meeting of entrepreneurs at 12.00 p.m. on 10 January, 2008, and “go to holiday with non-payment of taxes” from 1 January, 2008.

Entrepreneur Viktar Kryval, one of the applicants for the rally on 10 December, who was on 15-day hunger strike in protest against persecution of entrepreneurs by the authorities, called to follow the demands, declared at the rally. “If the authorities don’t suspend paragraph 1.1 of the notorious decree, targeted against our employees, individual entrepreneurs with them are ready to begin an all-republican strike from 1 January. We are not going to look for loopholes in the discriminating legal system, but will make the government respect the rights of individual entrepreneurs,” V. Kryval said.

In V. Kryval’s view, the anti-entrepreneurial laws, intimidation and arrests of individual entrepreneurs, mass turning them into victims of arbitrary use of power will surely become a subject of further investigation and legal treatment of the international community and future democratic power of Belarus.