The singing of the contract between the Russian Gazprom Company and the Ukrainian Naftogaz in presence of Russian and Ukrainian presidents Putin and Kuchma made experts establish the fact that Belarus has deviated from some earlier agreements on natural gas transit to Western Europe. With realization of the signed document Ukraine will come to the front in transit of natural gas to the West.
The results are in, and to no one`s surprise, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka will be allowed to run for a third term as president. What does the referendum mean for the opposition and for the people of Belarus? Transitions OnLine will host Radio Liberty`s Alex Znatkevich for a discussion on the situation in Belarus on 3 November, at 4:00 p.m. CET.
Mikhail Marinich’s lawyer has filed a complaint with a Minsk district court about what she calls the unlawful extension of the opposition politician’s term in custody. The authorities on Tuesday prolonged the detention of the politician, who has been in jail since April on a charge of illegal firearm possession, by another month.
Dzmitry Bandarenka, coordinator of the civil initiative Charter’97, was called in for questioning. He is to come tomorrow, on October 29, at 9 a.m. to the Organized Crime and Corruption Control Division of Minsk region (Varvasheni Street, 8). The writ was signed by its principal officer S.I. Voranaw. Dzmitry Bandarenka cannot guess why he was called in for the Division as a witness. “However, I am glad that finally I have received a writ, while previously people presenting themselves as officers of this Division called me on the phone, demanded to come, threatening and insulting me. Now, after receiving a writ, as a law-abiding citizen, I will come to the interrogation,” told Dzmitry Bandarenka.
The European Parliament voted on Thursday to give the 2004 Sakharov Award to the Belarus Association of Journalists, Le Monde newspaper reports. The award was given for the journalists’ persistence in protecting the free speech from the authoritarian regime in Minsk. “It’s a very positive event to see the prize going to this association of journalists that is fighting for the freedom of information that President (Alexander) Lukashenko is trying to silence,” the parliament’s President Josep Borrell said in a statement.
A top UN official yesterday called for the release of a US information technology expert arrested in Belarus earlier this month, saying his United Nations work entitled him to diplomatic immunity. Ilya Mafter was arrested in Minsk on Oct 15 and charged with fraud after causing local telecommunications companies to lose nearly US$100,000 (RM380,000), the Belarus security agency, the KGB, said at the time.
The USA denied the possibility to observe presidential elections in the USA for experts from Belarus, Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Savinykh told to BELTA journalists on Thursday in Minsk. As said by him, the Belarusian Embassy had made a written request to the heads of election organization agencies in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. For today three of the four addressees officially denied international observer accreditation to the Embassy.
US citizen Ilya Mafter, detained on October 15 in Belarus by KGB officers, bears no relation to the diplomatic service, and thus has no diplomatic immunity, told on Thursday head of Information and PR Department of the KGB Alyaksandr Bazanaw. In this way he commented on the statement of the UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch-Brown at the press conference in News York, who called upon the Belarusian authorities to release Ilya Mafter, saying his United Nations work entitled him to diplomatic immunity.
The leader of he United Civil Party Anatol Lyabedzka, brutally beaten by riot police during the opposition protest rally, was discharged from hospital and now is undertaking an outpatient rehabilitation treatment. Investigation procurator now interrogates witnesses of the United Civil Party leader’s battering. Mr.Lyabedzka is to visit the prosecutor’s office on October 28.
The United Nations Development Program Administrator Mark Malloch Brown called upon the Belarusian authorities to release American expert on information technologies, detained in Minsk. As the KGB (Committee of state Security) of Belarus maintains, Ilya Mafter was arrested for providing financial support to opposition, and his actions caused damage of 100,000$ to Belarusian telecommunication companies. Mafter worked for Internet development project in former Soviet states, Russian service of the Radio Liberty informs.
The proxy of the candidate to the Parliament, local entrepreneur Mikalay Awtukhovich Mikalay Aksamit joined the hunger strike of the chief editor of “Mestnaya Gazeta” Andrey Shantarovich. Mr. Aksamit protests against the election results. He wrote an application to district executive committee where he described examples of violations during the electoral campaign. His applications to Central Election Commission gave no result, that’s why he has gone on hunger strike. He demands to investigates all facts of violations and punish the guilty. Mr. Aksamit observed the Parliamentary election at election circuit #50 where the candidate Awtukhovich ran (according to the official information only 28% voted for him). The chief editor of “Mestnaya Gazeta” hungers for the seventh day already. He protests against the suspension of his newspaper by the Ministry of Information.
By this time in the college semester, Marina Puzdrova should be making her way from class to class in the drab brick building on Brovka Street. Her university has been shuttered, though, its students and professors dispersed by this country`s president, Alexander Lukashenko. Puzdrova, 19, would have been a second-year student at the European Humanities University, which since its creation in 1992 has been an outpost of liberal education in an increasingly illiberal place. It was, therefore, a threat to the new state ideology that Lukashenko is steadily building.
An investigator with the Tsentralny district police department in Minsk said that they have already solved the burglary of the apartment belonging to Ales Mikhalevich, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front, on the night between October 21 and 22.
The Institute for Democracy in Eastern Europe (IDEE) organized an independent observer mission consisting of 18 journalists from Azerbaijan, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan Kyrgyzstan, Poland, and Russia in order to monitor the Belarusian elections from October 9 to 18, 2004. In addition to the journalists, observer mission included the Honorable Senator Zbigniew Romaszewski from Poland.
The Conservative Christian Party (CCP) has obtained permission from the Minsk city authorities to stage a march to Kurapaty on October 31. CCP activists have traditionally marched to the Stalin-era massacre site just outside Minsk to mark ancestors remembrance day, Dzyady, observed on November 2. The demonstrators will assemble near the subway station Park Chelyuskintsev in central Minsk at 10:30 a.m. and will march through the city to Kurapaty where a rally will be held at 2:30 p.m., CCP Deputy Chairman Yury Belenky told BelaPAN.
Lukashenka is one of a kind. For years, that has perhaps been a comforting thought for many. Comforting but also wrong, as the past week has helped to make clear. Like a greyhound at a starter`s gun, Pavel Borodin, a senior figure in a bilateral organization that seeks to unify Russia and Belarus, said, "A third, a fourth, a fifth term [for Russian President Vladimir Putin] is completely possible," adding for good measure, "The kind of power held by Putin and Lukashenka is God-given." And in Armenia, the governing parties felt the need to say that President Robert Kocharian will not be doing a Lukashenka and changing the constitution to serve a third term.
President George W. Bush has signed the Belarus Democracy Act of 2004. Passed unanimously by the U.S. Congress, the new law authorizes assistance for Belarusian political parties, non-governmental organizations, and independent media working for democracy and human rights. The law expresses the sense of the Congress that the Belarusian authorities should not receive various types of non-humanitarian financial aid from the U.S. It also calls for the President to report to Congress on arms sales by Belarus to state sponsors of terrorism and on the personal wealth and assets of senior Belarus officials.
Yesterday in Warsaw a rally under such slogan was held. It was organized by Polish “Independent Students Association”, and by the “Union for democracy Support in Belarus” (“Zwi¹zek na rzecz Demokracji na Bia³orusi”). 50 protesters with streamers and flags stood in front of the Belarusian embassy in Warsaw. People chanted: “Yes! – to Belarus, No! – to Lukashenka”, “Long live Belarus!”
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