The head of the United Nations’ Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Leila Zerrougui, who had visited Belarus in August 2004 in the framework of the mission on Civil and political rights including the questions of torture and detention, was extremely surprised when at the recent meeting of the head of the human rights center Viasna in Geneva she learnt that Professor Yuri Bandazheuski is still in prison.
A spring session of both chambers of the Belarussian parliament is opening in Minsk on Monday. More than 40 issues are put on the agenda of the lower chamber ("Chamber of Representatives").
Shortly after the so-called Rose Revolution in the tiny republic of Georgia, the leaders of the other nations that once made up the Soviet Union gathered in the Caspian Sea oil town of Baku for the funeral of Azerbaijan`s longtime strongman president. There the heads of state of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and the Central Asian republics paid their respects to their fellow authoritarian even as they nervously eyed the instigators of the democratic uprising in their midst.
Negotiations of Vladimir Putin and Aliaksandr Lukashenka are taking place in Sochi. The meeting has started almost in a family way. The two leaders were accompanied by a pet of the Russian president, labrador Conny. It came into the hall with the two presidents, spinned around in front of the cameras, and after that again came near the leaders of the two countries. However, Conny was not present during the official statement for the press.
Today in the capital of Austria, Vienna, the Bruno Kreisky Award for Human Rights has been presented to the Charter’97 coordinator, member of the Council of Civil Initiatives “Free Belarus”, former deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Sannikov. In 1995 the Bruno Kreisky Award was presented to Russian human rights activist Sergei Kovalev.
Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Belarus, on Tuesday will head to Vatican to attend Pope John Paul II’s funeral scheduled for April 7. The 90-year-old cardinal will not be able to propose his candidacy as a new pontiff because of the age restrictions, Antony Klimatovich, pastor of the Blessed Virgin Mary Cathedral in Minsk, told BelaPAN.
Opposition activists Dmitry Bondarenko and Nikita Sasim were released on April 1 from the Minsk police`s detention center where they had served 10-day sentences. The two were arrested on March 22 during an unsanctioned demonstration in central Minsk in support of imprisoned opponents of Aleksandr Lukashenko`s government.
A group of young opposition activists on April 2 delivered a letter to the Russia embassy in Minsk on the occasion of the Belarusian-Russian Unity Day officially observed on this date. Seven opposition youths arrived at the embassy at noon and handed the letter to an embassy officer who went out to them.
Opposition political parties and pro-democratic non-governmental organizations have started collecting books and writing books for children`s institutions in the Gomel and Mogilyov regions, Belarus` areas hardest hit by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
On April 1 in the evening two activists of the Minsk city branch of the United Civil Party, Alyaksandr Biaspaly and Siarhei Lapusta, have spent about two hours in the police department of Kastrychnitski district of Minsk. The oppositionists were detained by police patrol at the metro station “Instytut Kultury”. The UCP activists were handing out leaflets with information about the protest planned for April 6, the anniversary of death of Henadz Karpenka.
On April 1 the member of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Raman Yurhel was fined 50 basic units for staging an unsanctioned protest against integration of Belarus and Russia.
“Zubr” activist Maksim Dvaretsky was detained in Mahiliou on the first of April. The guy was handing out newspapers with call to release Mihail Marinich. At the entrance to market. Dvaretsky was taken to Leninsky district police department. Protocol was drawn under article 172 of Administrative code (Distribution of printed editions without outline).
The political upheaval in Kyrgyzstan arrived like another fresh breeze of democracy blowing across the former Soviet republics, one that supporters of democracy in the region hope will also sweep aside the other ossified autocracies that emerged from the Soviet collapse.
Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka today denounced the toppling of Kyrgyzstan`s president as "banditry" and said no similar upheaval would be possible in Belarus.
The Commonwealth of Independent States, an organization loosely uniting all former Soviet republics minus the three Baltic states, was always fragile to begin with, but with three consecutive revolutions among its members within a year and a half, it is now all but crumbling.
On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet his Belarussian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, to discuss switching over to the Russian ruble as the common currency of Russia and Belarus beginning January 1, 2006, a source in the president`s administration told RIA Novosti.
Kyrgyzstan`s ousted president Askar Akayev signed a resignation agreement Monday in a ceremony arranged in the Kyrgyz Embassy in Russia, a Kyrgyz lawmaker said. "Akayev has just signed his resignation from April 5. He has also addressed the people of Kyrgyzstan," lawmaker Sadyk Dzhaparov told reporters. Akayev signed the agreement one day after it was worked out in talks with a parliamentary delegation from Kyrgyzstan. Dzhaparov is the member of the delegation. The signing procedure was documented by a notary and attended by the delegation members.
Pope John Paul II, whose 26-year papacy helped defeat Communism in Europe but left a Roman Catholic Church divided over his uncompromising orthodoxy, died on Saturday after a prolonged struggle with ill health.
Some 6,000 Polish army officers were slaughtered by the Soviets in Belarus in the spring of 1940, prominent historian Igor Kuznetsov said while speaking at a public hearing on the 1920-39 Stalinist atrocities in Belarus, which was held in Minsk on Saturday.
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