Euro Parliament HR chief expresses concern over recent harassment of “Viasna” activists
Heidi Anneli Hautala, chair of the Subcommittee on Human Rights of the European Parliament, has released a statement at her personal web-site, saying that she “received with great alarm the news of yet another search at the Viasna Human Rights Centre in Minsk and a brief arrest of the Centre’s President, Mr Ales Bialiatski, on 17th of January.”
The Finnish politician believes it is “continuation of the crackdown and harassment of civil society, that the authorities have intensified since the aftermath of the stolen elections on 19th of December.”
“With regards Viasna Centre, the intention seems to be also to prevent them from analysing the elections; during the previous raid the police effectively stopped the organisation’s staff from to analysing the information they had gathered from 600 election monitors present in Belarus” says the statement.
