Ales Bialiatski visits Italy at invitation of Amnesty International
From 23 to 27 February, Ales Bialiatski is going to visit Rome, Palermo, Syracuse and Milan, where activists of Amnesty International’s local groups have arranged meetings of different levels with the participation of the Belarusian human rights defender.
In the evening of 23 February, Ales Bialiatski met with activist of Amnesty’s office in Rome. The meeting was attended by the president and director of Amnesty’s national section. The human rights activist told them about his work and the history of Belarus over the past 25 years. Speaking of his impressions of the meeting, Ales stressed that the “activists of Amnesty Rome are extremely worried and concerned about the human rights situation in Belarus”.
Amnesty International’s Italian sections working in these cities have long been working with Belarusian human rights activists and monitoring the situation in Belarus. In October 2013, when Ales was behind bars, the political prisoner’s wife Natallia Pinchuk and prominent lawyer Pavel Sapelka were invited to Italy. Their visit was covered by the Italian media, both on TV and in newspaper publications.
Today, the chairman of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” is having a meeting with Jessica Laganà, head of the Human Rights Department at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.