Ales Byalatski: “Regime nervously reacts to internal observation”

A delegation of the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE/ODIHR) has visited Minks. Among other things, this organization is engaged in elections observation in many parts of the world.

Will the acceptable conditions for work of observers, including the foreign ones, be created during the imminent parliamentary election in autumn? Experts of “Zavtra tvoyej strany” discuss this issue.

According to the Vice President of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) Ales Byalatski (Aliaksandr Bialiatski), when foreign observers are concerned, it looks like the regime will make concessions to inter4national organisations.

“And as far as the internal observation is concerned, which is to be organized by Belarusian human rights watchdogs, problems are expected, as the regime reacts nervously to internal observation, knowing that the Belarusian observers can notice much more things than foreign ones, who arrive for a short time. And later they can share this information with the international community”, Ales Byalatski says. “However, under the Constitution and the Law on Elections, every citizen of Belarus has a right to take part in election observation. So proceeding from the constitutional rights, Belarusian human rights watchdogs will do their best to take part in the observation, but it is hard to say about the success, considering previous experience.”

The FIDH Vice President reminded that in 2001 the Human Rights Center Viasna was closed because of its participation in election observation. In 2006 activists of the non-governmental organisation “Partnerstva” which was carrying out election monitoring, were arrested and sentenced to imprisonment.

“There won’t be serious obstacles physically,” the political analyst Alyaksandr Klaskouski believes. “On the contrary, it could be noticed now, that the Belarusian leadership is energetically promoting its readiness to open the doors wide for foreign observers. The problem is that the fact that draws most objections from the opposition and different foreign structures is latency of this mechanism which offers all kinds of “elegant victories”, and which is impossible to notice for a person who has arrived for a few days and even weeks: they are five days of early vote, and that representatives of oppositional parties cannot watch how bulletins are counted. In short, there is the whole arsenal of means which prevent “unnecessary” eyes from the mechanism, as a result of the work of which official figures emerge.