Protests against Belarusian Investment Forum in London

• 18.11.2008, 12:46

A newspaper “Zvon” was handed out in front of the building where the Belarusian Investment Forum is held in London. An article “Businessmen in Belarusian prison” was published on its front page. Thus the protest against holding that event in the capital of the Great Britain was expressed.

The newspaper tells about the pressure of the legislation and criminal prosecution by the Belarusian authorities, about protest rallies in winter, and prison terms for their participants, Radio Svaboda informs.

Authors write about former political prisoners Andrei Kim, Syarhei Parsyukevich and Alyaksandr Kazulin, construction of a nuclear power station in Belarus, the new and harsher law on mass media, total control by the KGB, the only organisation in the former Soviet Union countries of the kind which has kept its name after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We would like to remind that arrests of participants of protest rallies in support of entrepreneurs’ rights are still taking place in Belarus. On October 27 an activist of the civil campaign “European Belarus” Alyaksandr Barazenka was arrested in Minsk. The oppositionist is one of the accused in the Process of Fourteen, a criminal case initiated on charges relating Article 342 of the Criminal Code of Belarus against participants of the peaceful protest rally of market vendors in Minsk on January 10, 2008.

The political prisoner went on a hunger strike in prison.

10 opposition activists: Alyaksei Bondar, Artsyom Dubski, Mikhail Kryvau, Mikhail Pashkevich, Alyaksandr Straltsou, Alyaksandr Charnyshou, Tatsyana Tsishkevich, Mikhail Sybach and Paval Vinahradau were sentenced to restriction of freedom for 2 years without sending them to special institutions. Maxim Dashuk as an underage was sentenced to a year and a half of restriction of freedom.