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Statkevich And Liabedzka Met With ODIHR OSCE Director In Belarus

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Belarusian politicians and human rights activists have agreed with the OSCE mission on the main point: a political will is necessary to return the right of choice to Belarusians.

On January 29 Belarusian politicians and human rights activists Anatol Liabedzka, Mikalai Statkevich, Valiantsin Stefanovich had a meeting with Michael Georg Link, Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and Kent Harstedt, deputy chairperson of the PA OSCE, special coordinator of the OSCE short-term mission.

The ODIHR was also represented by head of the Secretariat Jean P. Froehly and Election Adviser Vladimir Misev.

Michael Link and Kent Harstedt have brought to Minsk the final version of the document with the evaluation of the “presidential campaign” in Belarus, so the conversation partially concerned this document.

“We have agreed upon the main point, that in order to change the electoral legislation, and to return the right of choice to Belarusians, at least partially, not time is needed, as the Belarusians authorities claim, but a political will of the authorities. And that’s the most important thing. Besides, Link and Harstedt noted that proposals for amending the electoral legislation have been on the tables of Lukashenka, Yarmoshyna and Makei not for a day or a months, but for years, and it means that everyone has got acquainted with them,” – said Anatol Liabedzka to ucpb.org website.

“We have concentrated our attention on the fact that not quantitative indicators of changes in the legislation and law enforcement practice, but qualitative ones. It means literally three action points:

1. A transparent vote counting.

2. Pluralistic formation of electoral commissions.

3. Minimization of negative effects of early voting through regulation of this procedure.

There could be different opinions about to Link and Harstedt, but they are really professional figures. They know what should be done for people to receive the right of choice,” – Anatol Liabedzka said.

Following the results of the meeting, Valiantsin Stefanovich gave a short comment on it to Viasna human rights organisation website:

“The conversation could be divided into two parts. First of all, it’s the general situation in the country. I stressed that on the part of the authorities there have been no systemic changes, aimed at qualitative changing the human rights situation, and some recent trends even show its deterioration. In particular, I mentioned the recent cases when journalists contributing to foreign mass media were hold administratively liable.”

Valiantsin Stefanovich gave Mr. Link a copy “Analytical Review of the Human Rights Situation in Belarus in 2015”, which was prepared by the Human Rights Center “Viasna”. He noted that the conclusions made by human rights activists summing up the results of the last year, still retain their relevance. The human rights activist also briefed the ODIHR delegation on the latest document, adopted by a number of Belarusian human rights organizations a few days ago, which outlined the concerted position of the Belarusian human rights defenders in shaping the strategy of international partners with Belarus and their expectations of this interaction.

The second part of the conversation was dedicated to the latest “elections” of the president of Belarus.

Valiantsin Stefanovich stressed that “implementation of the recommendations of the ODIHR OSCE following the results of the observation, considering that many of them were made long ago, but are still relevant for quite a long period of time, are extremely important for us. They reflect the system-level problems in the electoral legislation in our country. First of all, they include the vote count and its transparency, formation of electoral commissions, early voting and rights of observers.”

“I observed that many changes could have been made even without amending the Electoral Code, and regulated by corresponding decisions of the Central Elections Committee. It is obvious that it all depends on the political will of the authorities mainly,” – the human rights watchdog said.

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