Human rights activists to ignore the “election”

The Minsk NGO Center for Legal Transformation said that it will ignore the campaign before the election to the “chamber of representatives”.

Alena Tankachova, the head of the Center, called the election “meaningless chaos”.

Previously the human rights center Viasna and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee started a campaign Human Rights Activists for Free Election to systematically watch the election campaign’s all stages and prepare reports. Meanwhile, the position of the Center of Legal Transformation was completely different. Alena Tankachova said:

- We will not do anything for this election campaign since we consider it to be ineffective. We will keep on our work for the freedom of assembly and associations. We will also continue to register violations of political rights and freedoms, whose number normally increases during election campaigns. Moreover, we will keep monitoring the courts in case civil activists are persecuted by the powers.

According to Alena Tankachova, the Center’s position is not a boycott: “The political waterline between boycott and participation is ridiculous, naïve and harmful. We don’t boycott, we do our work and don’t focus attention on this meaningless chaos.”

Vice chairperson of Viasna Valiantsin Stsiefanovich believes that the disputes between human rights activists regarding the monitoring of the “election” are a normal thing. He says Viasna’s position consequent, since the center has observed all recent electoral campaign in Belarus.

“We don’t take part in the “election”, we simply watch the process called “election” that will take place in the country no matter who will participate. If we want to assess how just the process was, we have to watch it. In any case we will be watching, no matter whether there will be boycott or not. Whether those persons who have announced the boycott can promote it, is also very important.”