The Belarusian National Assembly passed a statement on April 29 to condemn what it called the anti-Belarusian campaign allegedly conducted by European countries and the United States.

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The US Ambassador in Minsk, George Krol, said on April 28 that countries of Europe and the United States showed “unprecedented unity of views” while discussing a resolution on the human rights situation in Belarus in the UN Commission for Human Rights.

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The European Union does not seek to come to some arrangement with Russia on Belarus, the British ambassador in Minsk, Brian Bennett, said at a news conference on April 28. “Of course that is not the way we are progressing,” he stressed.

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Members of the National Alliance youth association threaten to block all entrances to the Belarusian embassy in Kyiv if the Belarusian authorities refuse to release the Ukrainians arrested and jailed in Minsk before May 3.

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Session of PACE committee on Belarus was carried out in Strasburg today. Member of Estonian parliament Andres Herkel was the chair of the session dedicated to situation in Belarus and to Belarusian political prisoners. Leader of civil initiative “Freedom to political prisoners” Pavel Marinich made a speech. He thanked PACE for attention to situation with his father and marked that Marinich case is just one of many facts of suppressing opposition in Belarus.

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“There is very little between the American policy towards Belarus and the European Union policy towards Belarus. Little to the point of being nothing at all,” British Ambassador Brian Bennett said at a news conference in Minsk on April 28.

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People in any country should have the right to freely express their views, George Krol, the US ambassador to Belarus, said on Thursday while commenting to reporters on the police`s crackdown on an unauthorized opposition demonstration in Minsk on April 26.

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A Ukrainian official renewed criticism of what his country views as the mistreatment of Ukrainian nationals during a Chernobyl anniversary rally in Minsk, a statement that came a day after the Belarusian foreign office announced that it had reached a full understanding on the matter with Ukrainian diplomats.

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There are no plans for a meeting between George Bush and Aleksandr Lukashenko during festivities on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the anti-Hitler coalition`s victory, said George Krol, the US ambassador to Belarus, at a news conference in Minsk on Thursday.

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Ukraine’s Pora party has urged the Belarusian authorities to release immediately five Ukrainians arrested during the April 26 opposition demonstration in downtown Minsk. Pora threatens to send “an international squad of peaceful revolutionists” to the Belarusian capital if its demand is ignored.

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Ninety percent of opinion leaders and experts believe that Belarusian leader Aleksandr Lukashenko is a dictator, suggests a survey by the Minsk-based Independent Institute of Social, Economic and Political Studies (IISEPS).

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The Minsk City Prosecutor’s Office has eliminated Veronika Cherkasova’s son and stepfather as suspects in the brutal slaying of the reporter. The prosecutorial agency issued a statement clearing Anton Filimonov, 15, and Vladimir Meleshko of the suspicion on April 18, but the document reached the murdered journalist’s relatives only 10 days later, the press office of the Belarusian Association of Journalists told BelaPAN.

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Reporters Without Borders condemned prison sentences handed down against two Russian journalists simply for covering a demonstration marking the anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

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Citizens of Russia and Ukraine detained on April 26 in Minsk are to be repatriate after the terms of their administrative arrests expire; Interfax was informed by Interior Affairs department of Minsk executive committee on Friday.

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The rally in support of the independent daily “Borisovskie Novosti” was staged in Barysau by Zubr activists before the trial over the editor-in-chief of this newspaper on April 28. Zubr activists unfurled a streamer with the words “Hands off the BN” on the bridge over the highway Minks-Moscow.

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French Ambassador Stephane Chmelewsky has questioned what appears to be a one-sided picture of the 1941-1945 Great Patriotic War portrayed by Belarusian government-controlled media outlets, suggesting that Belarusian historians explore some controversial pages of the war.

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