Adriaan Palm: Charter’97 should be available for Belarusians

The Deputy Ambassador of the Netherlands to Belarus thinks the independent media should be available for the Belarusians.

It was said by Adriaan Palm, Deputy Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Poland and Belarus, at the conference “Human Rights and High Technologies” in the Dutch Embassy in Warsaw on December 11.

”I think access to the Internet should be free. The Netherlands is one of the countries of the Freedom Online Coalition that promotes free access to information on the Internet. The rule should cover all non-extremist sites, including charter97.org.

It is very important for me that the Belarusian state turn attention to these violations in some way and stop restricting people’s right to information on the Internet. We all know how easy it is to block certain sites, and we use every opportunity to let the Belarusian authorities know about our concerns over restricted access to the independent Belarusian media, including charter97.org. We monitor trends in the world and view cases of restricted access to online media in Belarus in the global context, because the Internet control will be either stronger or weaker in the world,” he said.

The conference on sharing experience in the use of information technologies for defending human rights in Belarus, Poland and the Netherlands was held yesterday. A charter97.org correspondent reports that 70 people attended the event and 1600 watched the live stream in Belarusian and English.