Today the Minsk city court considered the lawsuit, filed by the Protest March organizers Valery Schukin, Dmitry Bondarenko, Yuri Khaschevatsky, Nikolai Khalezin and Timofei Dranchuk against the Minsk city hall over the illegal and unmotivated refusal of the Moskovsky court to consider their complaint over the municipal authorities’ behavior. As a result of long debates the Minsk court left the Moskovsky court’s verdict in force. The action’s organizers now intend to petition the Supreme Court with an analogous plea.

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Official visit to Belarus by the leader of the Chinese National Liberation Army colonel-general Fu Tsuanyu, held on May 24-28, will help to further deepen relations between the two countries, said the assistant to the Belarusian Defense Minister, major-general Sergei Bulygin, responsible for the country’s military policy. According to him, the visit served the goal of widening military and technical cooperation for the benefit of both states. The sides had signed in the past over 100 treaties on the military cooperation, 70 of which were fulfilled. By the end of the year they plan to hold another session of the Belarusian-Chinese coordination committee for military and technical cooperation.

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Legal action under art.210/3 of the Criminal code (embezzlement) was instituted on May 29 against the former chairman of the collective farm “Belarus” of the Brest district, deputy of the local Council and member of the agricultural committee Spiridon Podshibyakin. The man is indicted over the theft of state funds worth overall $4mln87thsd rubles.

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Inhabitants of the village Dyagovichi (Mogilev region) are planning to institute lawsuit against the newspaper “Respublika” and personally its correspondent Vladimir Dubovik over the insult of their honor and dignity. The villagers believe that the newspaper insulted the historical memory of their village and their ancestors.

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On May 1, 2002 there were 118,2thsd jobless citizens registered in Belarus, which is 15,3thsd or 14,9% more than on January 1. According to the Ministry of statistics and analysis, the official unemployment rate in the country that year rose from 2,3 to 2,7% of the total able-bodied population.

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The Belarusian embassy in USA reports that on May 17, 2002 the US Department of State revised the size of the consulate fares. New tariffs will touch upon all consulate’s services, except the issue of US national passports, said at the briefing the Foreign Ministry press-secretary Pavel Latushko.

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Three years ago on this very day the Belarusian authorities held under an open sky a festive event, which attracted thousands of young citizens. A sudden shower caused panic among the crowd. The folks streamed into the near-by subway underpass, which resulted in a bloody stampede leaving 53 people dead and some 250 injured. Today they opened a memorial at the place of the Nemiga’ tragedy – a stony chapel with a metal plate inside, on which the names of the victims are to be engraved.

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Amnesty International, an influential international human rights watchdog, published its annual report on human rights in the world, covering the period from January to December 2001. Following comes the excerpt on Belarus.

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On May 30 the Minsk city court will consider the lawsuit, filed by the Protest March organizers Valery Schukin, Dmitry Bondarenko, Yuri Khaschevatsky, Nikolai Khalezin and Timofei Dranchuk against the Minsk city hall over the illegal and unmotivated refusal of the Moskovsky court to consider their complaint over the municipal authorities’ behavior.

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Under the episode with the taxes, considered yesterday during the court proceedings over the former Belarusian Premier Mikhail Chigir, he can get up to seven years of jail. The investigators claim that Mikhail Chigir hadn’t fully paid to the state taxes when earning as the consultant of the German concern “Geya” in 1998.

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The interior state debt of the Republic of Belarus grew over April-2002 by 3,3%, constituting by May 1 917,2bln rubles, not counting credits in national currency, received by some companies under the government’s guarantees. Such preliminary data Interfax was told by the Ministry of Finance representative.

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