Ales Byalyatski: “Authorities are not ashamed of observers”
- 6.10.2008, 11:10
Belarusian human rights activists state that it is almost impossible to inform the public about the reported by them facts of violation the laws and falsification of the “elections” in Belarus, and the authorities use it shamelessly.
Belarusian human rights activists share the information of elections observing with Lithuanian journalists in Vilnius. State-controlled mass media didn’t give not only any alternative but also any information about the political campaign in Belarus, Deutsche Welle reports.
“It is the calmest electoral campaign we have observed for 15 years,” Harry Pahanyaila, head of the legal commission of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, said.
According to Ales Byalyatski, vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, Information vacuum in the country creates ground for unpunished repressions.
“Some candidates were dismissed rudely. A candidate of Kobryn made a scandalous record of his talk with the Konryn KGB head and a director of the enterprise, where he worked, who persuaded his and then set an ultimatum: “our town is small, if you want to work, then you must withdraw.”
The candidate recorded this and put it to the Internet, we attracted attention to this, but what did come then? Were the KGB head or the plant director punished? No, nothing like that. The person was dismissed, that’s all,” Ales Byalyatski said.
According to Byalyatski, independent observers of the “elections”, who have certain proofs of vote fraud, are helpless, too. Nobody is interested in them or fears them.
“we have dozens of such cases – an observers is sitting, counts every voter and receives that 150 people voted beforehand, but a report of voter count says 250, 500 or 600 people voted. What is this? Is this election? The authorities are not ashamed of observers any more - both our ones and international ones,” Byalyatski says.
Lithuanian journalists, who heard the story of Belarusian human rights activists, couldn’t understand why the society wasn’t interested in a unveiled abuse of the authorities, though according to observers, most of early voters were forced to vote. The human rights activists could only tell vivid examples.
“Everyone got used to this. For example, we received a photo of an advertisement in a Slutsk school: “Dear colleagues, please vote in advance, because we have been demanded to provide lists of teachers who haven’t vote yet.” Who demanded them, for what purpose – one can only guess. We know about Baranavichy, where teachers signed documents after they voted early,” deputy head of the Viasna human rights center Valyantsin Stefanovich tells.
The presented in Vilnius position on the Belarusian “elections” is only one of the views. International observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) recognised the “elections” non-democratic, but noticed a certain progress in comparison with the previous ones. Observers from the Commonwealth of the Independent States didn’t notice any violations.