Visit of the Chinese leader Jiang Zemin to Minsk was marked by the ZUBR resistance movement’s protest. While Zemin’s escort was driving along the Skarina prospect past the Oktyabrskaya square, ten ZUBR activists raised banner “Freedom to Tibet!”. The heads of the guys were covered with white bandanas “Free Tibet” and they gripped in hands portraits of the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama. Snapshots from the action see in Photo Chronicle.

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Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Lorne Craner met on July 17 with Lyudmila Karpenko, Irina Krasovskaya, Svetlana Zavadskaya, and Tatiana Klimova. The group also met with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Steven Pifer and officials at the National Security Council.

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MR. PHILIP T. REEKER, deputy Spokesman: Good afternoon, friends, colleagues, visitors, guests. Always a pleasure to have you here to have you here today at the State Department. It is Wednesday and I think we are ready to start. I wanted to raise at the beginning the subject of Belarus, and we will put out a written statement afterwards regarding, once again, those disappeared Belarusian politicians. The United States remains greatly concerned by a series of politically motivated disappearances in Belarus and the climate of political repression imposed by the Lukashenko regime.

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Pavel Kozlovsky – first Belarusian Defense Minister – considers a great blunder the passage of the new concept of national security without public deliberations. In his interview to BelaPAN the Minister underscored that “on the basis of the data, emanating from media, we can now conclude that the concept is getting more aggressive towards the neighboring countries.”

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The pre-election system of the economy functioning is obvious in Belarus. Political aims are dominating common sense, and no matter how they will be achieved, said during the press conference, which took place in the headquarters of the Belarussian Trade union Federation, the first assistant of the head of BTF Frants Vitko. The level of salary indebtedness proves that fact, while in the last month the authorities tried to hold it back.

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Visit of the Chinese leader Jiang Zemin to Minsk was marked by the ZUBR resistance movement’s protest. While Zemin’s escort was driving along the Skarina prospect past the Oktyabrskaya square, ten ZUBR activists raised banner “Freedom to Tibet!”. The heads of the guys were covered with white bandanas “Free Tibet” and they gripped in hands portraits of the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama.

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On June 18 a group of journalists an human rights defenders – Zhanna Litvina, Lubov Luneva, Anatoly Gulyaev, Viktor Mukhin, Andrei Bastunets, Gennady Barbarich and Ludmila Gryaznova – visited the laureate of the National Award in the Sphere of Human rights defense, a deputy of the 13th Supreme Soviet, a journalist Valery Schukin in the pre-trial detention center in the town of Zhodino. The meeting took place in a special room for visitors in the presence of the detention center personnel and of the deputy head of the Committee for Penalty Execution of the Ministry of the Internal Affairs Vyacheslav Shabanov. When the doors were opened, and Valery Schukin entered the room, we had hardly recognized him at once, while he was very pale, without a beard, and with an air of an obedient prisoner. Wearing a black T-shirt with “Charter97” logo, he was terrifically glad to see us. He shook hands with the men and hugged the women, sat on the chair and began answering our questions.

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Radio Ratsya, jointly with the Russian news agency “Deutsche Welle”, organized a radio link-up with the renowned Belarusian writer Vassil Bykov, who’s presently living in Frankfurt-on-Maine in Germany. Vassil Bykov is oftentimes called the conscience of the Belarusian nation and culture. He’s the most widely-read author in Belarus, classic of the national culture, exploring the most painful problems of the modern-day. “I feel at ease here at Germany, although there are interior political problems here as well. But at least I can work peacefully here, without fearing that they will abduct me in a dark place or else shoot me dead at the back of my head at the entrance to my house,” – noted the writer.

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Alexander Lukashenko advised the US State Department “to do their own business and stay away from issues which they don’t understand.” In this way the Belarusian leader commented to the press the statement of the US State Department, concerning the disappearance of prominent Belarusian oppositionists. US State Department based its conclusions on the information of the former procuracy detectives who had fled Belarus, reports Interfax.

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A group of journalists and human rights advocates met on July 18 deputy and reporter Valery Schukin in Zhodino jail. The visitors were accompanied there by deputy chief of the police Committee for the sentence execution Vyacheslav Shabanov, reports BelaPAN.

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Leader of the Brest affiliate of Youth Front Serzhouk Bakhun was convicted yesterday to ten days of arrest for his part in the action, that took place in December yester year – on the International Day of Human Rights. Back then the law-enforcers apprehended five activists and later punished all with administrative fines. In particular, the head of the Brest branch of the Youth Front had to pay a 200 minimum wages fine.

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Police raid in the office of the Syamon Domash’s initiative group took place July 17 in Kobryn. During the search the district sheriff Prokopchyk confiscated over two thousand copies of the paper “Right for freedom”, 200 copies of the “Nasha Svaboda” and other information materials for inside use. Members of the initiative crew also presume that the owner of the rented apartment is experiencing great pressure from above. They allegedly force him to abrogate the lease agreement with Domash’s team.

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Tomorrow presidents of Russia and Ukraine will be coming to Minsk. Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko awaits them in hopes to lift his own rating ahead of the elections. They already started televising a pre-election commercial, portraying both Putin and Kuchma.

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Russian mass media actively reacted to the emergence of new evidence of the Belarusian government’s implication in the disappearances of famous people. Popular Russian TV channel NTV gave it yesterday great footage: “Right now all leading opposition newspapers in Belarus come up with materials, confirming the original information. The journalists somehow got the copy of the report, filed by a prison administrator, where they execute death row inmates, and submitted to the Interior Minister Vladimir Naumov. The chief of the prison reports that he had numerously handed out the so-called “execution gun” to the colonel Pavluchenko. The dates of the gun’s issue coincide in time with the abductions.”

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Alexander Lukashenko gave a commission to his government to prepare within the next month the documents, freeing “Slavneft” from the payment of customs duties for the equipment shipped to reconstruct Mozyr oil refinery, “Rosbalt” quotes “Slavneft” vice-president Andrei Shtorkh as saying.

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There commenced a two-day official visit of the Chinese leader Jiang Zemin to Belarus. In honor of the high guest president Lukashenko will host a lunch. This morning will see official negotiations of the two heads of states. The main issue on their agenda will be the accelerated economic cooperation between China and Belarus. They expect to raise the annual trade turnover to $500 mln.

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In the quantity of people who have access to the Internet Belarus lag far behind not only all the Central and Eastern Europe countries (apart from Albania), but almost all of the CIS countries, excluding Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. This is a conclusion of the regular Global UNO account on the human development.

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