The committee of the Ministers of the European Council made a declaration today concerning the situation in Belarus. The Committee will demand the accomplishment by Belarus of all the requirements according to the statutes. Belarussian authorities are to take measures that would enable he assembly to abolish decision on depriving the special guest status of Belarus”. Unlike the deputies of the EC Parliament Assembly, The Committee of the Ministers supports the position of unity of the Parliamentary Troika, which includes PACE, European Parliament and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The Committee of the Ministers insists on fulfillment of the four requirements established by the ‘Parliamentary Troika’.

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A well-known Belarusian TV reporter and film producer Leonid Mindlin recently was beaten by unknown men right in front of the entrance to his house about 10 p.m. Three muscular men suddenly attacked Mindlin, two of them clutched his arms, and the third hit him hard with an iron stick repeatedly. (By the way, he is not a young man!) The criminals have not taken anything from the beaten up journalist, and that excludes the version of robbery. Now Leonid Mindlin is in a hospital, his condition is rather serious, his three ribs are broken. As far as we know, the day before the assault unknown people phoned Mindlin, a film director who is in opposition to the regime, which is certainly revealed in his creative works, and asked him if he is going to shoot a new film in the nearest future.

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The protest against demolition of the old building of a former synagogue in Minsk finished by arrests of two activists of the International Association of Belarusian Jews, Yakov Gutman and Vladimir Rubinchik. Yakov Gutman and Vladimir Rubinchik stood in front of the Minsk executive committee with posters: “Temple demolition is the destruction of the world! “People! Save Minsk synagogue in Dimitrova Str., 3, a monument of Belarusian and Jewish culture”.

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National Bank reacted to the official complaint of the Trade Union Federation related to its financial blockade. The protest was caused by stopped funding of the leading bodies of the Federation. Few month before the National Bank and the government introduced a new system of trade-union dues transferring. The trade union dues were moved from the first, immediate group of financial documents to the fourth group. As a result the financial activities and the structures of the Federation almost stopped working. The indebtedness to the trade unions makes billions of roubles.

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In Warsaw on September 24 at the Conference “Human Dimensions”, organized by the OCSE the problems of the freedom of expression and freedom of associations were discussed. On this day the representatives of Belarusian non-governmental organizations had an opportunity to voice their opinion. Ludmila Karpenko (Gennady Karpenko Foundation) and Ludmila Gryaznova, (Charter’97) represented the non-governmental organizations. Ludmila Karpenko on behalf of the wives of the repressed politicians (Svetlana Zavadskaya, Irina Krasovskya and Tatyana Klimova, who were also present at the conference), told about the political assassinations and abductions of the opponents of the Belarusian regime. Ludmila Gryaznova made a report on the violations of the freedom of expression and freedom of assembly by the authorities, which ked to the failure of the democratic forces at the elections. As for the reports of international human rights organizations’ representatives at the conference, they aired their concern about the political situation and lack of respect to human rights in Belarus.

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Yesterday at the sitting of the European Council’s Parliament Assembly in Strasbourg a report and a discussion on the presidential elections in Belarus were held. The spokesman , Belgian MP Stefan Goris, as well as Germany and Lithuania parliamentarians declared that the election failed to meet standards of the Council of Europe and were not free. Stefan Goris on behalf of nine PACE monitors, underlined that the conclusions about the results of the ballot vote can be done on the grounds of the violations of law and the authorities’ negative declarations during the pre-election period. He named unequal conditions for the candidates in the mass media, pressure on activists, infringement of freedom of expression.

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