Deputy Chairman of National Strike Committee of Traders of Belarus, member of the Council of Civil Initiatives “Free Belarus” Alyaksandr Vasilyeu was locked away in the colony 8 in Vorsha more than 6 months ago. Despite of the fact that the majority of prisoners on the colony are not by work, the administration of the colony forcibly makes Alyaksandr Vasilyeu work, though he has serious health problems.
The Domanovo prison administration in western Belarus allowed Valery Levonevsky, leader of market vendors` strike committee in Grodno sentenced for publicly insulting Aleksandr Lukashenko, to spend three days with his relatives from March 9 to 11.
The UN Commission on Human Rights is to hear two reports on the human rights situation in Belarus during its 61st session that opened in Geneva on March 14. One of the reports was drawn up by Adrian Severin, UN special rapporteur on Belarus, and the other by the commission’s working group on Belarus.
Zubr activist Maixim Vinyarski is imprisoned in a special pre-trial detention center of Minsk city executive committee’s Interior Affairs department for 15 days. Vinyarski was detained on March 11 after a protest rally in support of political prisoner Mikhail Marynich on October Square in Minsk. In the end of last year the court of Frunzenski district of Minsk sentenced M. Vinyarski to 15 days of arrest for distribution of independent newspapers. However, he had not served this term. After detention M. Vinyarski was immediately taken to police department of Frunzenski district, and later to pre-trial detention center.
Last week’s plenary of the European Parliament passed a strongly worded 24 point Resolution urging the Council to condemn the current Belarus regime as a dictatorship and President Lukashenko as a dictator.
Hundreds of leaflets with demand to release Mihail Marinich were thrown down from the high building in the center of Mahiliou. It happened when foreign delegation with Ambassador of Ukraine was nearby. Participant of the action Yauhien Suvorau was detained. He was taken to Leninsky district police station and released in two hours when protocol for violating article 143 of Administrative code was compiled.
The President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Rene` van der Linden, today made the following urgent appeal: “I am extremely concerned to learn of the serious deterioration in the health of the Belarusian opposition leader and political prisoner Mikhail Marynich. He first complained of feeling unwell on 3 March, but was refused treatment. On 7 March he suffered a stroke and is now partially paralysed, with impaired speech, and has unexplained deep scratches on his wrists. The prison colony, where he remains, is unable to provide suitable medical care.
On 10-11 March 2005 Ian Boag, Head of the Delegation of the European Commission to Belarus resident in Kyiv, Ukraine, visited Minsk to present copies of his credentials to Mr. S. Martinov, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belarus. During his visit Mr Boag also held meetings with senior Belarusian officials, members of the diplomatic and international community as well as mass media.
On March 11 Anatol Shumchanka was to be released after a 19-year administrative arrest in a special pre-trial detention center of the Minsk city executive committee’s internal Affairs department in Akrestsin Street. The court had found him guilty of violating an Article 167 Part 2 of the Administrative Code (organizing and participation in unsanctioned meeting). On March 12 an information was received that A. Shumchanka was transferred from the special pre-trial detention center to the remand prison of Minsk executive committee’s Internal Affairs department. He is suspected of beating of a cellmate (Article 339 Part 1 of the Criminal Code, which envisages a punishment by community service, or a fine, or an arrest up to six months, or deprivation of liberty up to two years).
On March 11 the “long meeting” of political prisoner Valery Levaneuski with his family ended. It had taken place in the colony “Vouchyja Nory” (Ivatsevichy district, Brest region). On March 9-11 the wide of the leader of the national strike committee of traders, a member of the Council of civil initiatives “Free Belarus” Valery Levaneuski, and his sons, were living in a guest territory of the colony. The prisoner made the administration to allow this meeting only after he threatened that he would go on hunger strike.
Mikhail Marinich`s relatives and his lawyer plan to press for transferring him from the prison to a special medical center, Pavel Marinich, the politician`s son, told BelaPAN. Valentina Shikhantsova, lawyer for Mikhail Marinich, confirmed to BelaPAN on Sunday that the imprisoned politician had suffered an apoplectic stroke and had problems with his left arm and leg. "This is apoplexy provoked by the fact that he did not receive the necessary medicines on time," she said.
The media watchdog of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, says the number of media outlets in Belarus is declining, while libel laws and prison sentences of journalists contribute to the lack of a free debate in the media. OSCE media official, Miklos Haraszti, visited Minsk last month at the invitation of the Belarus government to make an assessment of the current state of media freedom in the eastern European country bordering Russia and the Ukraine.
In America, criticizing the president gets you late-night laughs on television or maybe a syndicated newspaper column. In Belarus, it gets you prison time - with hard labor. Paval Mazheika, 26, knows that all too well. In June 2002, a Belarussian judge found him guilty of libeling President Aleksandr Lukashenko before the September 2001 election in a column he wrote for his newspaper, a weekly independent called Pahonia (Pursuit). The judge sentenced Mazheika to two years in prison, his editor-in-chief to two and a half.
A photographer with a private newspaper has complained to Grodno’s district prosecutor and district police chief about the actions of riot policemen, who she says mistreated her while dispersing a rally on Thursday.
The Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) has issued a statement to express its protest over the 10-day jail sentence imposed on reporter Andrei Pochobut on March 4.
Reporters Without Borders protested today against the 10-day prison sentence passed by a court in the city of Grodno (near the Polish border) on 4 March on journalist Andrei Pochobut for "participating in an unauthorized demonstration" by small business owners which he in fact was covering for the Pahonia online news site (www.pahonia.promedia.by). Pochobut also writes for Den, an independent weekly.
The Belarus Foreign Ministry criticized the European Parliament for passing a resolution on Belarus, the Interfax news agency reported on Saturday. "Such statements call into question the European Parliament`s ability to be an influential factor in the contemporary European politics. The release of just another stereotyped document devalues the role and significance of this European institution," Belarussian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ruslan Yesin said Saturday.
It took a while, but Lebanon`s uprising against the Syrian occupation finally has a color. Some had called it a Rose Revolution - like the one that felled President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia in 2003 - because protesters distributed red roses to soldiers. For a moment, it looked poised to possibly be a Candy Cane Revolution, based on the demonstrators` red and white striped scarves
Senator John McCain today released the following letter calling for the release of Ambassador Mikhail Marinich, a political prisoner wrongfully jailed in Belarus.
A popular internet-forum, forum.grodno.by, placed on the server of the local branch of the state-run telecommunications operator “Beltelecom”, was banned in Hrodna. The worker of the Republican association “Beltelecom” company, system administrator Alyaksei Rads, who supported the work of the forum, was dismissed. The reason of the incident was an active discussion concerning Lukashenka’s policy, and the imminent repeat parliamentary elections in the constituency number 52 in Hrodna.
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