NEWS ALERT

For more information, please contact CIS Program Officer Olga Tarasov at otarasov@ilhr.org

For Immediate Release

New York, July 8, 2005 - The International League for Human Rights, a New York-based non-governmental organization with special consultative status at United Nations, condemns the brutal actions of the Minsk riot police against disappeared journalist Dmitry Zavadsky's wife, Svetlana Zavaskaya, during a peaceful rally held in his memory.

On July 7th, approximately 30 of Zavadsky's family, colleagues and friends gathered in Minsk's October Square to commemorate the five-year anniversary of his disappearance. Zavadsky, a Russian Channel One (formerly known as ORT) cameraman, disappeared without a trace on July 7, 2000. In March 2002, two former Belarusian Special Forces agents were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping Zavadsky, however, credible allegations of Belarusian authorities' involvement in the crime were never investigated.

Shortly after the rally began, riot police, known as the Police Detachment of Special Purpose (OMON), arrived to disperse the crowd. When Svetlana Zavadskaya informed them that they were acting unfairly and that she was the wife of the disappeared journalist, an OMON officer punched Zavadskaya in the face and destroyed a portrait of Zavadsky.

Zavadskaya was admitted to the hospital where she was kept overnight for observation and tests, and diagnosed with a serious concussion. Zavadskaya filed a legal complaint with the Minsk Prosecutor General's office against OMON today and she informed the League that the riot police officer who attacked her claims that his actions were undertaken self-defense because Zavadskaya attacked him first.

The attack against Zavadskaya was documented on videotape by a Russian Channel One crew that was present at the event and may be viewed at: http://www.1tv.ru/owa/win/ort6_videopage.main?sender=news&p_topic_id=78976&p_video_num=1&counter1_href=287212&counter2_href=id=268366;t=56" \t "video_win_new.

Simultaneously, yesterday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the political and press freedom crisis in Belarus that strongly condemns the Belarusian regime's "indiscriminate attacks" on independent media, as well as "other acts of repression that flout the basic principles of democracy and the rule of law."

The League calls on the Belarusian authorities to aid Zavadskaya in the quest to uncover the truth about her husband's disappearance and bring the perpetrators of the crime to justice, rather than persecute Zavadskaya for exercising her rights according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, to which Belarus is a signatory.