Ales Byalatski: “We want to see real improvement of situation” :: Charter'97 :: News

The main economic board of the Department of Presidential Affairs has extended the tenancy agreement with the republican pubic association “Belarusian Helsinki Committee”, which previously was demanded to vacate premises. “It is hard to speak about some changed in the policy and in the attitude towards the third sector, to public associations. We should see not individual facts or decisions taken probably at the highest level. We must see a real improvement of the situation for activities of non-governmental organizations in Belarus. I would like to remind that for instance within the last seven years no of human rights organizations have been registered by Justice Ministry,” a well-known human rights activist Ales Byalatski said to Radio Svaboda.

As said by Byalatski, the future will tell whether it is “a real start of crackdown lessening, or is it an individual fact for the sake of PR, which in fact does not change the general situation”.

“Today we have seven persons who have been definitely imprisoned on political grounds, and the Belarusian regime is to find a possibility to release them indeed. They are Alyaksandr Kazulin, Zmitser Dashkevich, Artur Finkevich and others. At least, the chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe told about that unequivocally: the Council of Europe would not carry out negotiations unless and until political prisoners are released,” the human rights activist said.