Report about violations of human rights in Belarus to be forward to UN
- 12.02.2010, 10:28
Belarusian human rights watchdogs have prepared a report about the situation with human rights in Belarus.
The report is to be reviewed in the UN Committee on Human Rights. The following organizations participated in the preparation of these materials: International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC), Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ), “Viasna” Human Rights Center, Assembly of Democratic Non-Governmental Organizations of Belarus and Congress of Independent Unions (Belarus). As informed by Radio Svaboda, the report is to be used for the UN Universal Periodic Review of the Republic of Belarus in May 12, 2010.
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a key component of the Council consisting in a periodic review of all 192 UN member states’ fulfillment of its international human rights obligations. It is the first time when Belarus is to be included in this procedure, and among other things because the official authorities refused to cooperate with human rights structures of the UN for the last 10 years, the BHC chairman Aleh Hulak said.
“It is hard for me to say why our country hasn’t fulfilled its obligations and was not forwarding its materials. Apparently, it was not interested in cooperation with the international human rights protection structures. And we see that our country was in an international isolation for a long time, as it ignored the situation with human rights. It is the way of influence for not complying with one’s obligations to the international community,” Aleh Hulak said.
In the prepared report Belarusian human rights watchdogs witnessed human rights violations in 15 directions of the life of the society, including the issues of freedom of speech, trial, associations and many others.
“First of all, we touch upon the problem of registration of non0governmental organisations, or most exactly, the obstacles created by the legislation,” said the representative of the Association of NGOs Yury Chavusau. “And we offer exact statistics, as the number of NGOs in Belarus over the last decade remains a constant number, about 2,250 organisations. It means that the third sector in Belarus is not developing. It is also everyone’s knowledge about political parties that not a single political party has been registered over the last 10 years, though there had been attempts to do that”.
The chairman of the NGO Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAJ) Zhana Litvina noted that the issues related to the freedom of the media are included in five parts in the recommendations of Belarusian NGOs related to the Universal Periodic Review of the Republic of Belarus' fulfillment of its international human rights obligations, BelaPAN informs. “We all were witnesses that high-ranking officials said that the Belarusian authorities and Belarus share all the European values. One of the main values among the European values is freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Unfortunately, we have to state that the informational space, the sphere related to freedom of speech, with conditions of work of mass media, is the one less subjected to liberalization process,” Litvina underlined.
As said by her, this fact alarms the BAJ most. “It is alarming as the period of election campaigns is coming. And even today, though cautiously, we state that mass media won’t be able to fulfil their constitutional mission during these electoral campaigns,” Litvina stated.
The priority of the BAJ in particular and NGOs in general is the issue of termination of the policy of economic discrimination against independent media, Litvina said. “I mean practically unsolvable problem related to access to distribution by independent media. Other serious problems are access to information, accreditation, and interaction with ideology departments which have become real barriers for journalists in their access to information. And certainly, the practice of application of the Belarusian legislation concerning journalists and mass media,” Litvina said.
As said by human rights activists, an alternative report about the human rights situation in Belarus has also been sent to the UN Committee on Human Rights.
Dissemination of the document among international human rights organisations is the next task of the human rights sector of Belarus, said the lawyer of human rights centre “Viasna” Valyantsin Stefanovich said.
“Our next step is to make aware of the periodical report. We plan working meetings in Geneva with representatives of national delegations who are members of the UN Committee on Human Rights, a briefing for embassies of foreign countries in Belarus, and for embassies in Warsaw and Vilnius,” Valyantsin Stefanovich said.
Recommendations for the authorities and international human rights organisations for improving the situation with human rights in Belarus have been attached to the document which consists of 52 sections.