US Waits for Kazulin’s Release 4

The Charter’97 coordinator Zmitser Bandarenka and a member of the organizing committee of the civil campaign “European Belarus” Uladzimer Kobets have visited Washington on invitation of the foundation “We Remember”. During their stay in Washington Belarusian public men met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs David Kramer, Special Advisor to the Vice President on National Security Affairs Eugene Fishel, and Slovak Foreign Minister Jan Kubis. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Kramer stated that the US is looking forward to quickest release of Alyaksandr Kazulin.

Zmitser Bandarenka and Uladzimer Kobets also met with Slovak Ambassador to the US Rastislav Kacer (since November 2007 Slovakia presides the Committee of the Ministers of the Council of Europe), leadership of a number of US foundations and NGOs, journalists of US media, representatives of the Belarusian community in Washington.

As said by the Charter’97 coordinator Zmitser Bandarenka during the meeting with David Kramer and Eugene Fishel which lasted more than two hours, the situation in Belarus was discussed, and principally the situation with human rights in our country.

“David Kramer is called an architect of the new approach to Belarusian-American relations. He really knows the situation in Belarus perfectly well, and he was genuinely interested in the issue of Belarusian political prisoners’ release. The US Government has focused its attention on three issues of democratization of Belarus: repressions ceasing, release of all political prisoners, access of opposition representatives to mass media and freedom of speech, and free election. As said by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, release of all political prisoners can become only the first step in normalization of the two countries’ relations, but the US would welcome such a decision of the Belarusian authorities. The US is looking forward to release of the rest of the political prisoners, especially of Alyaksandr Kazulin. The US politician asked to convey his personal message to each of the prisoners of conscience who had been released,” Zmitser Bandarenka said.

“A heated political struggle is taking place in the US at the moment. With great interest we observed the primaries campaign in District of Columbia, where Republican Senator McCain won, and Obama won in the Democratic presidential primary. We saw Americans taking part in the election campaign with genuine interest, and how intense the campaign on TV, on the web, in the streets of the American capital is. At the same time representatives of the government assured us that the Belarusian issue is a priority in the politics of the today’s US government, and will remain the same after election of the new president,” stated the member of the organizing committee “European Belarus” Uladzimer Kobets.