PA OSCE PASSES TOUGH RESOLUTION ON BELARUS TODAY :: Charter'97 :: News

Today at the session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE a resolution with very firm wording on the situation in Belarus can be adopted today. Yesterday the rough copy of this resolution was supported by the majority of the participants of the Political Committee of the PA OSCE session. The text of the resolution differs from the previous ones and is not restricted to the establishing a fact of human rights violations in Belarus. In the draft of the resolution of the PA OSCE trade in arms and disappearances of opposition leaders are mentioned for the firs time.

The day before the voting the creator of the resolution Steny Hoyer gave comments to Radio Svaboda:

“The resolution is rather simple and quite short. In concrete terms it underlines the drawbacks that are observed in Belarus. I would like to remind that Belarus had signed Helsinki treaty, but on Saturday refused to give the place in the Assembly to its own national legislative body. It is because the PA believes that Belarus infringes the principles of the Helsinki agreement. It is the only country –OSCE member that does not have a place in the PA OSCE. It proves that the majority of the PA OSCE members think that the activities of Lukashenka’s administration does not correspond the aspirations of the international community that it would keep to Helsinki agreements.

I do not fully agree that the resolution is tough. We are not satisfied with Lukashenka’s administration. We believe that this administration is the worst in Europe. We regard it as not democratic and believe it does not correspond to Helsinki principles and violates human right, political and civil rights on a regular basis. We think that we should draw attention to this situation all the time, to help those who fight for basic rights. We shall continue raising this question until some progress follows”.

Steny Hoyer was asked if any consultations on this resolution with the Russian delegation took place, as Russian representatives are always very critical of the reasoning of the Belarusian opposition, and in fact lobby the interests of the official Minsk. “We discussed Belarusian theme with the Russian delegation, and our ambassador to Vienna explained them that if Lukashenka’s administration would renew visas of the mission representatives in Minsk and let them continue their work, monitoring, observation, it would help to settle the conflict existing between Belarus, the OSCE and the PA. The Russians turn our attention to the fact that Belarus is a member of the OSCE Permanent Council. That’s right, but it is in disagreement with all other members except Russia. But I think that even the Russians believe that Lukashenka’s administration is its own enemy”.