Belarus Project

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Belarus Updates, 2000
INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS BELARUS UPDATE Edited by Victor Cole Vol. 3, No. 27 July 2000 IN THIS ISSUE: - Belarusian opposition leaders meet American officials in Warsaw - EU condemns Shchukin and Statkevich sentences - Opposition activists arrested and fined - Independent newspaper fights denial of registration - Belarusian language education in decline - Monuments to vanished democracy and Stalin's victims - Iraq-Belarus strengthen cooperation - Russian politicians appeal to Lukashenko --HUMAN RIGHTS AND OPPOSITION NEWS- MADELEINE ALBRIGHT MEETS BELARUSIAN DEMOCRATS IN WARSAW On June 26-27, Poland hosted the World Forum on Democracy, reported Nasha Svaboda, an independent Belarusian newspaper. An NGO forum met parallel to the official meeting of Foreign Ministers. A delegation from the united Belarusian opposition included Anatoly Lebedko, vice-speaker of the 13th Supreme Soviet and chair of the United Civic Party; Vintsuk Viachorka, chair of the Belarusian Popular Front Adradzhenne; Dmitry Bondarenko, coordinator of Charter 97; Ludmila Gryaznova, a deputy of the 13th Supreme Soviet; and Nina Stuzhinskaya, deputy chair of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party. Because democratic forces have gained so much and young democracies are inherently fragile, "cooperation on a global basis is more possible than ever before, and also more necessary," Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Secretary of State, told the Forum. "We need a true democratic community; defined not by what we are against, but by what we are for; enshrined by leaders from every point on the compass; and strengthened by the full participation of civil society," Albright concluded. On June 26, the Belarusian delegation met with Albright, Dr. Harold Koh, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, and George Soros, prominent American financier and philanthropist. The Belarusian politicians discussed their current objectives in Belarus, as well as the response toward this fall's parliamentary elections. Since the Lukashenko government continues to suppress democracy and a free and open society, and has shown no progress in improving the human rights situation in the country, the democratic political opposition will not be able to participate freely and fairly in the parliamentary elections -- unless significant changes are made to the Belarusian electoral code and access is granted for the opposition to the state media. The Belarusian democrats expressed their concern about the plan of Belarus and Russia to create a closer union, which will diminish Belarusian sovereignty. (Nasha Svaboda, June 27) EU CONDEMNS SENTENCING OF OPPOSITION LEADERS The European Union has condemned the sentencing of Valery Shchukin, a deputy of the 13th Supreme Soviet, and Nikolai Statkevich, chair of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party, found guilty of allegedly "organizing and actively participating in mass actions which violated public order," during the October 17, 1999, Freedom March in Minsk (See Belarus Update Vol. 2, No. 42). [Statkevich was also charged with the same offense for the July 27, 1999, opposition protest in Minsk. Judge Igor Krot of the Minsk City Court sentenced Statkevich to a two-year suspended term and Shchukin to one year under Art. 168, para 3, of the Belarusian Criminal Code.- Ed]. The EU leadership believes that the criminal case against the opposition leaders was initiated for purely political reasons. "The authorities' actions leave no doubt that the regime still relies on suppression of fundamental political and civil freedoms," the EU officials said. The EU urged Lukashenko to stop the repression of democratic forces in the country. "The attempts to establish links between Belarus and the international community are in danger while human rights, respected by all Europeans, are not observed in Belarus," concludes the statement. (EU, June 28) LOCAL POPULAR FRONT ACTIVIST DETAINED Gennady Talerenok, deputy chair of the Borovliany branch of the BPF Adradzhenne, was detained on June 25, during a meeting with patients of the Borovliany cancer hospital, reported the BPF press service. At a police station, the opposition activist, who is receiving medical treatment at the clinic, demanded immediate release because he was sick. He was set free, but next day was again summoned to the police station, where a protocol was filed against him for "participation in an unsanctioned action." (BPF press service, June 28) OPPOSITION ACTIVIST FINED On June 20, the United Civic Party and Charter 97 picketed the Minsk City Council, protesting against the municipal authorities' crackdown on free speech and assembly through an unconstitutional ruling requiring that the locations of pickets and mass gatherings be moved to Bangalore Square on outskirts of Minsk. On June 28, Vladimir Romanovsky, an opposition activist, was fined 390,000 Belarusian rubles (about $400) under Art. 167 of the Belarusian Administrative law for an allegedly unsanctioned picket of the Minsk City Council, reported Charter 97. The court also imposed a 20 minimal wages fine on Galina Goncharik and reprimanded Ludmila Bozhok, two other protestors. (Charter 97, June 29) LOCAL OPPOSITION ACTIVIST RECEIVES COMPENSATORY DAMAGES Belapan reported on June 23 that Gennady Samoilenko, a member of the local branch of the United Civic Party in Zhabinka, Brest Region, was awarded 50,000 Belarusian rubles in damages for his illegal detention on December 8, 1999. According to the police protocol submitted to court, he was arrested for distributing leaflets criticizing the unification with Russia. Samoilenko was able to prove in court, however, that at the time in question, he was still in police custody for his participation in another protest earlier in the day. The Brest Regional Court reversed the decision of a Brest District Court, which had earlier sentenced the opposition activist to 10-days imprisonment and imposed a fine on him. (Belapan, June 23) INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER VS. GRODNO CITY COUNCIL Nasha Svaboda reported on June 30 that the Leninsky District Court in Grodno heard the complaint filed by Andzhey Pisalnik, editor-in-chief of Reporter, an independent newspaper, against the Grodno City Council. The city authorities turned down three application forms filed by a group of journalists to register the newspaper, citing a lack of proof that the founders were renting their office legally. Apparently in an effort to get rid of a troublesome case, Judge Alexander Dyadel ruled that the case had to be referred to the Belarusian Supreme Economic Court. Prof. Mikhail Pastukhov, a former justice of the Belarusian Constitutional Court and the current head of the Media Support Center at the Belarusian Association of Journalists, represented Reporter. He commented that the judge's decision contradicts the Belarusian law and that Grodno's mayor Anatoly Pashkevich could be fined up to 50 minimal wages for unlawful refusal to register the paper. (Nasha Svaboda, June 30) INDEPENDENT JOURNALISTS DEMAND FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND PRESS On June 26, the Belarusian Association of Journalists held a picket in Minsk in support of the independent press in Belarus, reported Belapan. The protesters held up posters saying: "No to the Police State" and "Do not Write, Do Not Criticize, Do No Speak, and You Won't Be Sentenced." "We demand equal economic conditions for the independent press and state-owned press and protest the Lukashenko regime's refusal to supply the information to non-state media," Zhanna Litvina, President of the Belarusian Association of Journalists, told a Belapan correspondent. (Belapan, June 27) EUROPEAN PARTIES SEEK ALLIES IN BELARUS A delegation of Lithuania's Conservative Party, the Great Britain's Conservative Party, Sweden's Moderate Party, and the Polish Freedom Union, visited Belarus in late June to conduct a fact-collecting campaign initiated by the European Democratic Union (EDU), reported the Baltic News Service. "We wanted to get a better idea about the political situation in Belarus," said Rasa Jukneviciene, a leader of Lithuania's ruling Conservative Party. The delegation met the leaders of the Belarusian United Civic Party to discuss the political crisis in the country before the parliamentary elections scheduled for this fall. The delegation also held talks with representatives of the OSCE AMG in Belarus. (Baltic News Service, June 29) MONUMENT TO VANISHED DEMOCRACY Ivan Misko, a devoted backer and friend of Gennady Karpenko, plans to unveil a monument to Karpenko's memory in July 2000 after the Congress of the Belarusian Democratic Forces opens in Minsk. Karpenko, a prominent opponent to the Lukashenko regime, died abruptly on April 6, 1999, at age 49 of what the medical authorities here said was a cerebral hemorrhage. Although there is no evidence of foul play, the circumstances surrounding Karpenko's final hours have caused his family and colleagues to doubt that he died of natural causes. Karpenko received no serious medical attention for 24 hours after he had collapsed and entered a state medical center. His death came only two days after he visited Tamara Vinnikova, former national bank chair of Belarus, while she was under house arrest. "From the very beginning, I suspected that he was murdered somehow," said his wife, Ludmila, in an interview to the New York Times. "And when other opposition leaders started disappearing months later, it confirmed my suspicions." Since the funeral, the pressure on the family has not eased. Karpenko's son, Dimitry, has been driven from his job in a state enterprise and his family remains under surveillance and harassment from the Lukashenko's security forces. Were Karpenko still alive, he would certainly have been the leading candidate to challenge Lukashenko, in the view of most local political analysts. "Without him the opposition cannot offer a broadly acceptable leader," admitted Yevgeny Ogurtsov, a member of the United Civic Party and an editor of Grazhdanin [the Citizen], an independent newspaper shut down by the authorities in 1996. For that reason, Karpenko's death was deeply disturbing to many in Belarus. (New York Times, June 29; ILHR, June 29) MONUMENT TO POLES MURDERED BY NKVD UNVEILED IN BELARUS A monument to the memory of 4,406 Polish military officers, police officers, judges, government officials, and civilians executed between April 3 and the end of May 1940, by the Soviet NKVD, or secret police, in Katyn (now on Belarusian territory ), has been unveiled in Cherven, 60 kilometers south of Minsk. Joseph Stalin and other leaders of the Soviet Union, following a meeting of the Soviet Politburo on March 5, 1940, signed the decision to execute the Polish captives. In April, 1943, the German army announced the discovery of the mass graves in the Katyn Forest, an area then under Nazi occupation. The Soviet Information Bureau disavowed the executions and attempted to cover up the Soviet Union's responsibility for these executions by declaring that these Polish captives had been engaged in construction work west of Smolensk and had fallen into the hands of the Germans, who executed them. An international commission of 12 medical experts visited Katyn at the invitation of the German government and later reported unanimously that the Polish officers had been shot three years earlier when the Smolensk area was under Soviet administration. (BBC, June 25) WORKERS STRIKE IN MOGILEV On June 26, about 30 workers of Dubrova, a collective farm in Gomel Region, went on strike, demanding timely payment of wages ($15-20/mo.) and better labor conditions, reported Viasna Human Rights Center. As a result of the protest, the farmers have promptly received their February salaries. (VHRC, June 27) BELARUSIAN-LANGUAGE EDUCATION IN DECLINE Belapan reported on June 28 that the Association of Belarusian Schools had sent an open letter to Vasily Strazhev, Minister of Education, to express its grave concern over the decline of Belarusian-language education. "The government did everything possible to destroy the Belarusian-language education system," says the Association. According to the Association, there are no schools with Belarusian as the instruction language in Mogilev and Pinsk, while in Minsk the proportion of the students receiving instruction in the Belarusian has precipitously decreased. At the same time, domestic opposition to total Russification is mounting, particularly among young people. [In May 1995, Lukashenko held a referendum that resulted in making Russian an official state language, on par with Belarusian. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 until 1995, only the Belarusian had had the status of the state language. - Ed.] Abruptly reversing the efforts of the 1991-1994 nationwide program to revive Belarusian culture long repressed under communism, the Lukashenko administration has closed virtually all Belarusian schools, put a chokehold on independent Belarusian-language publications, causing their numbers to dwindle (some have been forced to publish abroad), altogether banned the publication of textbooks in Belarusian, and criminalized the display of national symbols. Lukashenko clarified the philosophy behind his language policies to the people of Belarus in a widely broadcast statement that "Russian and English are the only languages in the world in which one can fully express one's thoughts." (Belapan, June 28) AT HOME IN BELARUS- ZAMETALIN DENIES BELARUS- IRAQ MILITARY COOPERATION Interfax reported on June 25 that Vladimir Zametalin, newly appointed Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, stressed that "cooperation between Belarus and Iraq is developing exclusively within the frameworks of the existing trade regime stipulated by the UN memorandum 'Oil For Food'." He complained about the fact that the cooperation between Belarus and Iraq is "being discredited more and more by those countries that support preservation of the harsh sanctions against Iraq," denying any military cooperation between the two countries. Hikmat Al-Azzawi, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, is expected visit Minsk on July 16-20, 2000, to take part in the second session of the Belarus-Iraq Bilateral Intergovernmental Committee for Cooperation. (Interfax, June 25) EVERY FOURTH GIRL IN BELARUS AN ATTEMPTED RAPE VICTIM According to a recent national survey conducted by the Minsk Center of Sexology, every fourth school-age girl and every sixth boy in Belarus has been a victim of attempted rape. Another study, which surveyed 250 sixth-graders in Minsk, revealed that 48 percent of children are subjected to harsh physical punishment by their parents, and 77 percent complained that they had been publicly humiliated by their teachers. Specialists from the Center say that there is a disturbing evidence that a lot of children cannot cope with physical and psychological violence at home, at school, or in the streets: Last year 245 cases of attempted suicide by children were officially reported in the country. (Transitions Online, June 26) UN STUDY NOTES AIDS SURGE IN FORMER SOVIET UNION A new study released by the United Nations says that the growing problem of intravenous drug use in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union puts the whole region at risk of seeing the rate of AIDS cases rise, UN correspondent Robert McMahon reported. The report by the UN Program on HIV/AIDS, known as UNAIDS, estimates that the number of people living with the virus in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has more than doubled in the past three years. The UNAIDS officials said that Ukraine has the largest number of infections in the region. In Belarus, UNAIDS is touting the success of a program that provides clean syringes and condoms along with education about safe injection. Bernhard Schwartlander, a senior epidemiologist with UNAIDS, acknowledged that so far, Belarus, with its estimated 14,000 cases of HIV infection, has been lucky. "I don't think, however, that Belarus can be seen as a model. I believe it's pure luck that they haven't been hit worse than we observe right now," he concluded. (UN, June 27) -RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN BELARUS- CATHOLICS' ANNUAL PROCESSION BANNED BY AUTHORITIES Nasha Svaboda reported that the Minsk City Council banned an annual Catholic procession in Minsk scheduled for June 25, the Day of God's Holy Body, on the pretext that it will threaten public safety. The believers wanted to march in a festive procession along the Skaryna avenue toward the Red Cathedral located on Independence Square in downtown Minsk. (Nasha Svaboda, June 27) -BROTHER SLAVS- RUSSIAN POLITICIANS URGE LUKASHENKO TO HOLD FREE ELECTIONS On June 27, Russian parliamentary leaders announced that they would urge Alexander Lukashenko to hold free and fair parliamentary elections this fall, reported the New York Times. The appeal adds significant political weight to the message already delivered by European leaders. "We take our obligation seriously to do everything possible to democratize the electoral process in Belarus," said Oleg Naumov, a member of Russia's Parliament from the Union of Right Forces Party. "We are trying to avoid any ultimatum, however, because an ultimatum could only lead to the strengthening of the Lukashenko regime as it happened with Milosevic in Yugoslavia." The final draft of the appeal, which was reportedly coordinated with but not openly endorsed by the Kremlin, will carry the signatures of Yevgeny Primakov, head of the Fatherland-All Russia Party; Boris Gryzlov, leader of the Unity Party, which is most closely aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the leaders of the Yabloko and Union of Right Forces parties. Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party, had not yet signed the appeal, but organizers hope that the Communists might still sign it before the document is sent to Minsk. "We are convinced that the legislation for elections to the Belarusian Parliament must meet international standards, and the vote should be democratic and fair," Russian parliamentarians say in the appeal. The document calls on Lukashenko to form electoral commissions with participation of all registered parties and to grant equal access to the state-run media. (The New York Times, July 28). LUKASHENKO IN MOSCOW Izvestia reported that Lukashenko visited Moscow on June 27 to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in a session of the Supreme State Council of the Russia-Belarus Union. Neither of them made any public comments about the looming confrontation over the elections in Belarus. In Minsk, Yuri Khadyka, deputy chairman of the BPF Adradzhenne, told reporters that it only makes sense to participate in elections that really give the right to choose. Based on Lukashenko's statements so far, he added, the opposition fears that the Lukashenko regime is planning to hold a farce, not a legitimate election. Belarusian opposition leaders have also visited Moscow recently to seek assistance from liberal parties to put pressure on Lukashenko. (The New York Times, June 28 - Izvestia, June 27) RUSSIA, BELARUS TO KEEP OWN FOREIGN POLICY After meeting with Lukashenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his TV appearance on June 28 that Russia and Belarus did not plan to coordinate their foreign policies. Putin added that a joint foreign policy would be worked out when the two countries finally linked up. He did not say when it might happen. "With respect to foreign policy issues, Russia and Belarus will have the right to have their own opinions," Putin said. "But we do want to coordinate our foreign policy activities. When, we hope, a unified state is created, then, of course, there will be a joint foreign policy," Putin added. (Reuters, June 28) SLAVIC FORUM CONDEMNS US CONGRESS RESOLUTION ON BELARUS A meeting of the International Slavic Committee held in Prague on June 17-18, 2000, condemned the U.S. Congressional resolution, H. Con. Res. 304, calling it "interference in the internal affairs of an independent state." [Resolution 304 condemns the egregious violations of human rights in Belarus, calls on the Lukashenko regime to negotiate with the opposition to hold a free and fair election, and urges the Russian Federation to end financial support to the regime (See Belarus Update Vol. 3, No. 17) - Ed.]. A statement issued by the Committee accuses the resolution of "building ideological justifications for a possible military aggression against a sovereign state" and demands that the U. S. "cease political, economic and psychological pressure on Belarus." The International Slavic Committee was set up in 1998 during the Slavic Nations Session in Prague. It consists of representatives of the 12 countries, including Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At the moment the ISC is preparing to register itself in the Czech Republic as an international civic forum. (Belapan, June 28) -INTERNATIONAL NEWS-TRANSITION TO MARKET ECONOMY - HARD CHALLENGE FOR BELARUS On June 29, speaking at the UN General Assembly 24th Special Session, Belarusian Prime Minster Vladimir Yermoshyn said that the transition from a rigidly centralized economy to a market economy had turned out to be a hard challenge for Belarus, reported Nasha Svaboda. He complained that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster had "left the country with a wound that had not healed. He expressed his gratitude to the United Nations for its UNESCO Chernobyl Program. (Nasha Svaboda, June 30) --CALENDAR OF UPCOMING EVENTS-- July 2 - the Coordination Council of the Belarusian Democratic Forces to hold a Congress July 29 - the All-Belarusian Congress to hold its first session on in Minsk ********************************************************************** The Belarus Update is a regular news bulletin of the Belarus Human Rights Support Project of the International League for Human Rights. The League, now in its 59th year, is New York-based human rights NGO in consultative status with the United Nations and ILO. The Belarus project was established to support Belarusian citizens in making their cases before the U.S. government and public and international fora and intergovernmental organizations regarding Alexander Lukashenko's wholesale assault on human rights and the rule of law in Belarus. For more information e-mail belarus@ilhr.org or call (212) 661-0480 or fax (212) 684-1696 or visit our web site at www.ilhr.org Back**