Sigourney Weaver and Tom Stoppard to take Lukashenka to The Hague
- 7.03.2011, 1:08
Families of political prisoners and Hollywood stars are going to push for evaluation of the actions of the Belarusian authorities by international courts and unconditional release of the dictatorship’s prisoners.
As charter97.org website learnt, Iryna Bahdanava (Andrei Sannikov’s sister), Eva Nyaklyaeva (Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu’s daughter), Katsyaryna Statkevich (Mikalai Statkevich’s daughter), Elena Edwards (Milana Mikhalevich’s sister), as well as Tom Stoppard, a playwright, “H20 Law LLP”, a law firm, and the Belarus Free Theatre, have initiated a campaign Free Belarus Now. The campaign’s initiators will address international courts with a demand to investigate the cases of mass human rights violations in our country.
The campaign has been supported by Mikhail Gorbachev, Vaclav Havel, George Clooney, Michael Douglas, Mark Knopfler, Sigourney Weaver, Senator Richard Durbin, and many other prominent personalities.
Letters of intent have been sent to the UN, which is the first step in the process initiating proceedings in the UN commissions. The letters have been sent to the four subdivisions of the UN which investigate human rights violations:
- the Human Rights Committee – the working group on reports;
- the UN Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers;
- the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
- the Special representative of the Secretary General on the issue of human rights defenders.
The initiators of the campaign cal upon everyone who had been affected by the repressions from the Belarusian authorities, to take part in publishing the showdown of facts and inform about violations to the lawyers of the campaign, who will take upon themselves the process of formalizing complaints and their collecting and support in the process of complaints’ investigation in the UN commissions and subcommissions.
One more area of work is to be action demand and initiation of proceedings against Belarusian authorities in international courts.
Photo: A film frame: Sigourney Weaver as Lieutenant Ellen Ripley in Alien 3.