The February human rights violations chronicles in Belarus presents information on the political disappearances, ill-treatment of humans, arbitrary arrests, biased trial, media freedom, freedom of peaceful assemblies and demonstrations, government’s stance to the international human rights abuses investigation.

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Lawsuit on power abuse by the Novopolotsk “Naftan’s” leadership is going at full force. Radio Svaboda reports that on Friday night the law-enforcers called in at the house of the “Naftan’s” director general Konstantin Chesnovitsky and told him to follow them. Chesnovitsky never returned home ever after.

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Editor-in-chief of the independent Belarusian newspaper “Nasha Niva” Andrei Dynko was summoned on Monday to the state procuracy, where he was handed in a written reprimand. The editorial board is charged with violating art.5 of the current Law on Press – dissemination of information on behalf of unregistered organizations, public associations etc. The text of the reprimand makes mention of the publications #1 and #2 from “NN” 2002. Radio Ratsya was told by Dynko that both publications mentioned the Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

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Carrying out a pre-election monitoring in Ukraine, the PACE mission was astonished to learn about the complete absence of political dialogue, escalating tensions and distrust between various political forces, along with the total absence of trust towards the democratic processes. That’s how the member of the PACE pre-election monitoring mission Hanne Severinsen characterized the general conditions, under which the parliamentary campaign is going on in Ukraine.

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By March 1 the tax indebtedness of the Novopolotsk “Izmeritel” factory amounted to 554mln rubles. As claimed by the head of the inspection of the Ministry for taxation for Novopolotsk Ekena Petrochenko, “the plant hasn’t donated a penny into the budget during the past three months. We have to simply execute the law now,” – says Petrochenko: “We distrained the plant’s assets almost to the full size of underpayment. This is the youth center, a portion of transport equipment and consumer goods”.

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The US Department of State spoke on February 28 about the possible application of sanctions against Belarus in connection with accusations of arms supplies to the countries and groups, supportive of terrorism. Last October the CIS in Washington leaked information from its report on the weaponry sales, reading that Belarus is the largest illicit arms supplier for the Islamic extremist organizations. Rumors about Minsk’s arms deals with Arab countries, Palestinians and Muslim extremists have been spreading for long time. Alyaxandar Lukashenka personally mentioned the existence of a special president’s fund, where the funds from arms sales are accumulated.

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A customs’ inspection of the Belarusian journalists and politicians invited to the international conference “Prospects of cooperation with Belarus” held in Lithuania lasted more than six hours. The leader of the United Civil Party Anatol Lyabedzka, the chair of the Belarusian women’s party “Nadzeja” Valentina Polevikova, one of the leaders of the Social Democratic Party (Narodaya Hramada) Uladzimer Nistiuk, the chair of the analytical center “Strategia” Leanid Zaiko and others underwent personal inspection in presence of witnesses.

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Prior to the Police Day the Mogilev regional law-enforcement department released an order, under which over ten ZUBRs and “Young Front” activists are placed on the books in the commission for juvenile delinquency. Radio Svaboda reports that the guys aren’t suspected of having committed any crimes. The young boys and ladies were captured during street rallies or distribution of agitation flyers. Their mere activism during the election campaign convinced the law-enforcers to rank them among “difficult adolescents”.

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For not fulfilling the regulations on the necessary size of the assets, the Council of the directors of the National Bank has suspended the action of the licenses on attracting the population’s deposits from March 4, 2002 to January, 1, 2003,of such banks as the “Belorussky Narodny Bank”, “Belarussky Industrialny Bank”, “Bank Poisk”, “RRB-Bank”, “Absoliut Bank” and “Belorussky Birzhevoi Bank” from March 4, 2002 to January, 1, 2003.

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Бюро исполкома Национального олимпийского комитата Беларуси создало комиссию Executive bureau of the National Olympic Committee of Belarus set up a special commission to examine the financial activities of the sports recreation center “Olympiysky”, as well as to study the course of its reconstruction. The major reason for that was the incident, which occurred there on February 16, but which was made public not until now. A young man, swimming in the pool, was sucked in by the water-collecting pipe, which hadn’t been properly isolated with a grid. The medics fought to save his life but to no avail. Until the investigation procedures are over, the bureau determined not to pass any decision on “Olympiysky’s” leadership.

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An old idea of creation of yellow trade unions – structures, totally obeying to the authorities, is topical again. As “Nasha Svaboda” says, such trade union is being found in a rush at the Minsk Automobile Building plant (MAZ). According to the information of the newspaper, a week ago the director of the MAZ Valyantsin Hurynovich collected an initiative group to set up a trade union. The leadership of the plant has handed out corresponding questionnaires, and the bureaucrats were ordered to collect signatures of 10 per cent of workers of the MAZ necessary by the law to establish a trade union.

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