Will Ryhor Vasilevich accept Ales Bialiatski’s proposal?

Ales Bialiatski, Chair of the Human Rights Center Viasna, vice-president of the International Federation of Human Rights Ryhor Vasilevich to cancel the warning issued to him by the General Procuracy on 16 February. Human rights activist reminds to the Prosecutor General about the elimination of the official registration of Viasna, which, in his opinion, was connected with the active monitoring of the presidential elections in 2001. This step of the authorities had been declared unlawful by the UN: the Human Rights Committee of this influential organization stated that it was a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights by the Belarusian authorities.

All three further attempts to formally register Spring proved fruitless. ‘In general, not a single human rights organization has been registered in Belarus since 2003’, reminds A.Bialiatski.
 
‘In this situation, neither I nor other members of the Human Rights Center Viasna, have a chance to get official registration for the association’, reads the complaint.

He also stresses that Art. 193.1 of the Criminal Code ‘directly contradicts to the Constitution and the international human rights norms’, recalling that in 2008-2009 even state officials spoke of the possibility of its abolishment.  

‘It’s a pity that the General Procuracy, which must protect civil rights, uses its legal rights to suppress and harass citizens for their human rights activities,’ states the complaint. ‘Such actions of the procuracy’, adds the human rights activist, ‘spoil the image of our country, discrediting it in the eyes of the international community’.