Vatslav Gavel Cheers Up Incarcerated Belarusian Journalists :: Charter'97 :: News

On March 2 the delegation of Czech journalists visited the editor-in-chief of the newspaper ‘Rabochy” Viktor Ivashkevich, who’s currently serving his term in the Baranovichi open-type penitentiary for an attempted slandering of the head of state. The Czech journalists passed over to their Belarusian colleague a letter from ex-president of the Czech republic Vatslav Gavel. The politician shared his solidarity with Viktor Ivashkevich, calling him “a representative of a group of people, which aspire to democratize the authoritarian regime”. “I’m deeply convinced,” – writes Gavel: “that transformation of the Belarusian society, economic development and the country’s accession to the family of European democracies is only possible with the respect for the human rights and democratic values, such as the independent media, for example”.

The head of the Czech delegation, journalist Yan Urban said that on March 1 the same letters were delivered to the social labor colonies in Osipovichi and Zhlobin, where Nikolai Markevich and Pavel Mozheiko (both from “Pagonya”) are currently serving their terms.

The letter of Gavel, who was then incumbent president of the Czech Republic, was passed over to the convicts on March 1 by the editor of the Czech radio Yan Urban and representatives of the Czech TV, as well as the Czech charge d’affaires in Belarus Alesh Foitek.

“I am extremely excited and thankful to Vatslav Gavel for his words of encouragement,” – noted in a conversation with the BelaPAN correspondent Markevich: “I’m glad to see that they remember us abroad too, while many in Minsk seem to keep the imprisoned journalists in oblivion, as if we do not really exist at all.”