Campaign “Human rights defenders for free elections” starts



Belarusian Helsinki committee together with Human Rights Centre “Viasna” announced about starting the campaign “Human rights defenders for free elections”. They declared about it on February 1 at a special press-conference which took place in BHC headquarters.




As the leaders of these organizations state, according to the president’s Decree #21 of January 18, 2010 elections of deputies of the 26th calling to the local Council are appointed to March 25. “Because of this significant event in the life of our country we, Belarusian human rights defenders, declare that we have always stood for and are standing now for free and fair elections and for such elections to give an opportunity to strengthen the trust of citizens for local public authorities and to support the development of democracy in the country, - is written in the claim of chairmen of “Viasna” Ales Bieliatsky and of BHC Oleg Gulak. – Guided by this position, we start monitoring of the elections. This monitoring will operate basing on all stages of electoral campaign and in terms of information from human rights defenders from all regions of Belarus”. The evaluation of stages of electoral process will be carried out according to the elective legislation of Belarus and international standards, observance of the principles of transparence, freedom and truthful elections process. A special attention will be paid to the practical realization of new regulations of elective legislation which had been included to the Elective code on the eve of the political campaign. As explained by Oleg Gulak, the monitoring will take much time as usual. “This means that at the same time we are evaluating the situation in which the elections will take place. It’s clear that really free and truthful elections can take place only in a situation when there are enough freedoms and human rights for that, for people to be able to form their opinion freely, for them not to be afraid to come to the elections and to make their conscious choice and for their choice being calculated the right and exact way”, - stressed the human rights defender. The lawyer of Human Rights Centre “Viasna” Valientsin Stefanovich noted that one regulation fell short of expectations and isn’t performed properly. According to this regulation 1/3rd of an election commission, territorial one in our case (after the first stage of the campaign) should be formed from representatives of political parties and public organizations. “If we compare the body of commissions at the previous elections, we will see that there were also representatives of political parties and public organizations making 1/3rd of the body. The other question is that those organizations were government-oriented. And the tendency in the same today” – said the human rights defender. Valientsin Stefanovich mentioned democratic parties didn’t adopt their nominees to territorial commissions very actively and his opinion is that probably they play stake on their participation divisional commissions which deal with counting votes. The chairman of juridical committee of BHK Garry Pogoniaylo told that Belarusian Helsinki Committee together with specialists in the field of legislation prepared and recommended to use several recommendations connected with lodging complains of violations of electoral rights to political parties and all participants of electoral process. “This topic is very important for monitoring of how the procedures of electoral process will correspond those legislative regulations which we deal with today, - stressed the lawyer. – The experience of the last electoral campaigns showed that many governmental structures and electoral commissions treated appeals of decisions, electoral administrations, and actions of electoral commissions and other participants of electoral process connected with violations of continuing electoral legislation pro forma. In many cases courts didn’t admit to examination claims of the participants of electoral procedures. Now it is more or less regulated, in the Code in 13 cases there are orders about possibility of a judicial appeal of a decision of electoral administrations”. As explained by vice-president of International federation of human rights, the chairman of Human Rights Center “Viasna” Ales Bieliatsky, the Central Election Commission of the Republic of Belarus and other electoral commissions have a complicated goal to carry out the elections “more or less properly”. “This goal comes to not only the electoral legislation, not only to those traditions of forming the commissions which were created in the last 15 years. As we take as an example Minsk city electoral commission, we see that on this committee are prevailing people which work there for 10-15 years and bodies of electoral commissions are formed from people who work together with local authorities hand in hand more that one year. They are Union of Women, BRSM and Union of Veterans, - stated Ales Bieliatsky. – I would also like to speak about the prevailing atmosphere of the Belarusian society and the main slogan of executive powers hammered into our heads “don’t butt out!” which unfortunately works well. Let’s analyze the situation of 2009 – it was a relatively calm year because there were no political campaign and great national campaigns, but nevertheless in fact every week we registered dismissals of political and public activists which caused problems of surviving of a person and his family, especially in minor towns. And there were dozens of such cases last year. And speaking about active students, which were excluded from higher educational establishments for their active public position, there were such cases in Baranovichy University and BSU. And I shall remind you the last time about the case when teachers – members of different political parties were warned to Minsk executive committee and were strictly told to leave political parties and structures. The Prosecutor’s office is dealing with this case now… And we see dozens of such initiatives appearing in regions but central authorities turn a blind eye to it and we can say that they cover it and encourage such depoliticization of Belarusian society. And it’s almost impossible to carry out a normal electoral campaign”. Belarusian human rights defenders claimed that they are open in their work for cooperation with all governmental and non-governmental organizations and also persons interested in carrying out of free democratic and truthful elections.

Gennady LOGINOV