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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A scandalously known Russian site RICN.ru launched a contest for the ugliest site of the whole runet. The leader in the nomination is Alexander Lukashenko’s official site, called by the site’s authors “Personal site of the collective farm’s director”. You may take part in the voting HERE.

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Julia Chigir and lawyer Alexander Pylchenko submitted a complaint against Alexander Chigir’s court verdict. The complaint was submitted to the Minsk city court. The mother and the attorney plead with the jury to cancel the verdict, under which Chigir the junior was condemned to 7 years of jail. As said by Julia Chigir, her son also intends to compose a concomitant complain over the matter. He continues to plead not guilty and demands cessation of criminal persecution of him.

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Belarusian human rights organizations – the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the “Vesna” human rights center, “Center for human rights” and “Legal assistance to the population” forwarded to Alexander Lukashenko, prosecutor general of Belarus and the Grodno region prosecutor an address concerning the legal persecution by the authorities of the correspondents of the independent newspaper “Pagonya”, shut down a while ago.

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The subject of staff cleansing in the country’s healthcare becomes prevalent in the periodical press. It somehow ousted even political news and events, in the epicenter of which stands the state figure#1. This time another victim of the Ministry of healthcare became the chief doctor of the 1st city hospital Nikolai Andreev, dismissed under a definition “for systematic failure to execute professional duties”. Not willing to put up with an arbitrariness, the man addressed the Belarusian Helsinki Committee with a complaint.

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At the web-site of the bloc“Nasha Ukraina” headed by Viktor Yuschenko a section “For TV and Radio” is launched. The parts of audio recordings of Yuschenko’s speeches at the meetings with voters and journalists will be presented there. Besides, some exclusive interviews can be found at the site. The files are in .wav or .mp3 formats.

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Organizers of the concert tours one more time came under attack with the rent of most of the Minsk’s concert halls in February-March abruptly going uphill. This is but a natural follow-up of the decision by the commission, headed by the presidential manager Galina Zhuravkova.

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Today vice president of the Russian brewery “Baltika” Adam Tlekhurai comes to Belarus. He is to negotiate about the project of investment agreement on privatization of the Belarusian brewery “Krynitsa”. As we have informed, last year “Baltika” invested USD 10.5 mln to reconstruction of “Krynitsa”. However, in the middle of December 2001 the works on the project were resumed because the government of Belarus did not decide to issue additional shares of “Krynitsa”, which were to be given to “Baltika”. After that the company from St. Petersburg stated that it would sue the Belarusian government.

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Presentation of the report of the US State Department on Human Rights in Belarus for 2001 took place in the USA Embassy in Minsk. Belarusian politicians and reporters were invited for presentation. In his speech the Ambassador of the USA in Belarus Michael Kozak cite the works of the Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour Lorne Craner, who is responsible for drafting the report for the US Government:

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Five days after the start of Alexander Lukashenko’s vacation we finally learnt about the man’s whereabouts. Belarusian Prime Minister Gennady Novitsky, answering the Radio Svaboda’s question, said that Alexander Lukashenko left for a short-term vacation to Austria and that he indeed isn’t executing the presidential duties. There exist a few versions as to the reasons of his departure. Some say that Alexander Lukashenko is learning mountain skiing skills after Vladimir Putin’s example. But the second version sounds more plausible – Alexander Lukashenko has serious health problems.

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The Minsk district court denied the right for personal pension to the former head of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich. Today there ended court deliberations over Shushkevich’s court appeal against the Ministry of labor and social protection. As you know, Shushkevich demanded that the authorities cancel their illegal decision on his pension. Over the past 5 years he has been getting a monthly 3 thousand 196 Belarusian rubles, which can be equated to $1,87 in equivalent.

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Brest regional court has satisfied the petition of the Justice department of the regional executive committee and ruled to liquidate the center of civil initiatives “Vezha” (the “Tower”). The representatives of the third sector view this ruling as another example of the pressure campaign that Belarusian government unleashed against non-state organizations of the country.

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28 cars of Mercedes-180 were transported to Mahilyou. The regional executive committee plans to give them to the officials of the region. Until now the officials drove Russian Volgas. As Radio Svaboda was informed in the regional executive committee, this present was made by the presidential administration. Today heads of 21 districts, chairmen of 7 executive committees and city executive committees of Mahilyou and Babruisk, are to sit in the new cars. It arouses irritation of the workers of plants, organizations and state farms that cannot get their salary and hardly make their ends meet. The Mahilyou region is the second after Homel where bureaucrats have been presented new autos.

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