Leader of an opposition youth movement in Belarus has been sentenced to 1.5 years in prison for failing to officially register it with state agencies.
Dmitry Dashkevich, a student majoring in philology and co-chairman of the Young Front movement, has been found guilty of organizing activities of an unregistered non-governmental organization, Interfax reports.
Dashkevich was detained in Minsk on September, 15.
Meanwhile, activists of the Young Front are staging protests in front of the court building. Dozens of young people holding flowers and photos of Dashkevich chant slogans demanding to free the young man.
Former presidential candidate Alexander Milinkevich is taking part in the protest action, watched by EU and U.S. ambassadors.
Popularity: 1% [?]
November 1, 2006
During the annual march commemorating the victims of Stalinist purges seven activists of the opposition were detained by police as The Associated Press news agency reports.
About 1,000 people took part in the authorized march. Some participants carried posters with the slogans: “No to Union with Russia!†and “Union with Russia Means Hunger and Killings.†Several hundred police were present to monitor the gathering. At the same time police did not confirm the detention of the oppositionists.
The marchers followed from downtown Minsk to a site of Soviet-era mass executions carrying 12 wooden crosses which they set up at the Kuropaty mass grave site, where about 100,000 people were shot dead between 1937 and 1941.
“Political repressions in Belarus continue and Kuropaty reminds Belarusians what frightening consequences tyranny leads to,†Mikola Kryzhanovsky, from the opposition Conservative-Christian party, told to the marchers.
Popularity: 2% [?]
October 30, 2006
Belarusian opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich was awarded the Sakharov Prize, the EU top human rights award, on Thursday for his fight for democracy in the ex-Soviet republic, the European Parliament said.
The prize is named after Andrei Sakharov, one of the best known former Soviet dissidents. It is awarded by the EU assembly annually to a person or group judged to have made a particular achievement in the field of human rights, defense of international cooperation or promotion of democracy and the rule of law.
Milinkevich ran unsuccessfully against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko in elections in March and became the symbol of Belarus’ persecuted opposition. He was awarded the prize after two rounds of voting by leaders of the European Parliament’s political groups, said parliament spokeswoman Marjory van den Broeke.
“Milinkevich is the face of the opposition in what is the last dictatorship in Europe. He is a brave man, who has been willing to put himself at risk in an attempt to bring about change in his country,†said Hans-Gert Poettering, chairman of the center-right European People’s Party, the largest political grouping in the EU assembly. “We sincerely hope that this award by the European Parliament will substantially help his cause.â€
Other nominees shortlisted for the prestigious award, which comes with a 50,000-euro check, were people fighting for the release of hostages kidnapped in Colombia, represented by Ingrid Betancourt, a Colombian presidential candidate held by the rebels while campaigning in the jungle during the 2002 race and still missing; and Ghassan Tueni, the father of a Lebanese anti-Syrian critic slain in a car bombing. The prize will be presented to Milinkevich — if he is allowed to leave Belarus — at a December session of the European Parliament.
The Cuban women’s movement Ladies in White, Nigerian human rights lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim and the Reporters Without Borders media organization were joint winner of last year’s award, which was created in 1988 in honor of Sahkarov, a Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.
Milinkevich, who was arrested and sentenced to 15 days in jail after running unsuccessfully against Lukashenko, led unprecedented demonstrations to protest the outcome of a vote denounced by the opposition and Western nations as a sham.
Lukashenko — who has ruled the nation since 1994 with an iron fist, earning him the nickname “Europe’s last dictator†- won another five-year term in the March vote. He is accused of jailing his critics and quashing Belarus’ independent media.
Milinkevich, a physicist and mathematician by profession, has been a compelling and unifying figure for an opposition that incorporates widely diverse forces ranging from pro-Westerners to Communists. He is widely regarded as principled and determined without being power-hungry.
Milinkevich visited the European Parliament twice earlier this year, asking the assembly for support in his fight against Lukashenko’s totalitarian regime. He urged the EU to put hundreds of people responsible for electoral violations in the ex-Soviet republic on a travel blacklist and asked for cheaper EU visas so that Belarusian students could travel abroad on scholarships.
Popularity: 1% [?]
October 27, 2006
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko wants to improve relations with the United States, today told the new U.S. ambassador to Belarus, Karen Stewart, AP reports.
Lukashenko said Minsk wants an “open and constructive†dialogue with Washington on the basis of “equality, mutual respect, and consideration†of each other’s interests.“
â€The differences in views on a number of problems should not stand in the way of steps to bolster joint efforts in areas where our approaches coincide,“ he was quoted by Interfax as saying.
Lukashenko said that he hoped Stewart, whom the president credited with knowing Belarus well and having extensive experience, would help broaden â€mutually beneficial and respectful relations between our countries.“
The United States has dubbed Lukashenko â€Europe’s last dictator“. The Belarusian leader has repeatedly accused the Washington of seeking his ouster.
However the United States is the biggest source of foreign investment in Belarus. Trade with the United States accounts for about 3 percent of Belarus’ foreign trade, Xinhua adds.
Popularity: 1% [?]
A Minsk court sentenced a Belarusian rights activist to two years at a prison colony Monday for saying authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko needed a psychiatric examination, AP reports.
In convicting Yekaterina Sadovskaya, the Leninsky District Court pointed to the unpublished statement by her organization Veche that also called for a boycott of the March presidential election and accused Russian special agents of supporting “the Belarusian dictator.â€
“In Belarus, they even try you for your thoughts,†Sadovskaya said after the sentence was handed down. “Lukashenko has turned human rights in Belarus into an empty sound.â€
Police found and confiscated the Jan. 21-dated statement during a search of her apartment even though she had not distributed it anywhere. During the trial, she confirmed she was the author of the statement.
The court also fined her 4 million Belarusian rubles ($2,000) for moral damages that she allegedly inflicted against judges in the provincial town of Kirov during a trial of local residents.
The 60-year-old activist has been arrested and fined several times in the past for trying to organize pickets demanding that Belarusian authorities respect human rights.
Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet republic for more than a decade, is a pariah in the West for his iron-fisted ruled, quashing all dissent.
Western observers say the March vote was severely flawed.
Popularity: 1% [?]
October 25, 2006
