Belarusian Question In Bratislava :: Charter'97 :: News

The international conference “A New Quest for Democracy” took place yesterday in the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava. The conference was organized by the two leading Slovak independent centers – Association of International Studies and Institute for Public Relations supported by the Marshall Fund. The aim of the conference was to discuss the problems of democratic transformations in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Representatives of the civil society of the countries of the Eastern Europe, European and American politicians and public figures took part in the conference. The conference took place on the eve of the summit of US and Russian presidents, where the extension of the democracy’s borders in Europe is to be discussed as well. According to the information of the Russian TV channel NTV, the delegation of Belarus was perhaps the largest at the conference, which, according to the journalists, clearly demonstrates in which direction the efforts of the democratic international community are to be focused in the nearest future.

The interest to the situation in Belarus was also underlined by the high level of its international participants. Among them were Jan Kubis, Secretary General of the OSCE; Jan Figel, European Commissioner for Education. Training, Culture and Multilingualism, European Commission; Mikulas Dzurinda - Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic, Pavol Hrusovsky - Speaker of the Parlament of the Slovak Republic, Eduard Kukan - Minister of Forein Affairs of the Slovak Republic, Bruce Jackson, Transition Democracies Project’s Director, and the President of the US Committee on NATO, Vladimir Socor, analyst with the Washington-based «Jamestown Foundation», Carl Gershman, the head of the NED Foundation, and MPs of the European Parliament.

The delegation of Belarus included the leader of the civil initiative “We Remember”, member of the Council of Civil Initiatives “Free Belarus” Irina Krasovskaya, international coordinator of the civil initiative Charter’97, member of the “Free Belarus” Andrei Sannikov, the leader of the youth movement “Zubr” Uladzimir Kobets, the chairperson of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Zhana Litsvina, the director of the Independent Institute of Socioeconomic and Political Studies Aleh Manaeu.

Yesterday at the conference two reports by Belarusian participants, Irina Krasouskaya and Aleh Manaeu, were presented. Aleh Manaeu told to Radio Svaboda:

“In her statement Irina Krasovskaya told about the problem of disappeared oppositionists, about the reaction of the Belarusian society to the results of the autumn referendum. In my contribution I tried to answer the question whether Belarus and its society are ready for the events of a Georgian or Ukrainian level.”

According to information from Bratislava, the Belarusian theme was mentioned in almost every speech of the conference participants.

At the conference the unfavorable situation with democracy and human rights in Russia was compared with the very favorable development of freedoms in Ukraine and Georgia. Russia was represented by only one person, a member of the human rights organization “Memorial Grigory Shvedov. As the NTV channel informs, well-known political analysts Gleb Pavlovsky and Vyacheslav Nikonov wanted to come to the conference, but they were not allowed to come. As Pavel Demesh, the director of the Marshall Fund in Slovakia, told: “It is a conference about democracy, and they are not the best representatives of Russian democracy”.

Belarusian, Georgian and Ukrainian representatives at the conference reported the results of the discussions of the topics at the conference to the Prime Minister of Slovakia, Mikulas Dzurinda, with the wish to pass them on to presidents Bush and Putin, whom he is to meet.

Today right after the American-Russian summit the meeting of US President George Bush with activists of civil society of the Eastern European countries is planned. Some participants of the yesterday’s conference are expected to take part in this meeting as well.