Miklós Haraszti: “No changes in dismal human rights situation since presidential election” in Belarus

“Dur­ing the last four months, no changes have been ini­ti­at­ed in Belarus to alter the oppres­sive laws and prac­tices, while numer­ous cas­es of new vio­la­tions of basic rights have emerged,” Mr. Mik­lós Haraszti said in a Pub­lic State­ment* released today. 

In his state­ment, the human rights experts remind­ed that the Octo­ber pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, just as all votes since the 1990s, “fell short of demo­c­ra­t­ic stan­dards, and the incum­bent was reap­point­ed fol­low­ing an unver­i­fi­able turnout and non­trans­par­ent bal­lot count.” 

“Nev­er­the­less”, Mr. Haraszti said, “along with inter­gov­ern­men­tal and domes­tic human rights orga­ni­za­tions, I com­mend­ed that polit­i­cal pris­on­ers had been released on the eve of the elec­tion. It seemed a good start that, unlike dur­ing the 2010 elec­tion, the author­i­ties refrained from vio­lence against polit­i­cal oppo­nents, and they did not arrest the rival can­di­dates.” 

“Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the dis­mal state of human rights has remained unchanged in the coun­try,” the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur stressed. 

“The author­i­ties have not ceased the sys­tem­at­ic harass­ment of those who attempt­ed to prac­tice their indi­vid­ual, civ­il, polit­i­cal, and oth­er rights, despite the par­tial sus­pen­sion of EU and US sanc­tions, decid­ed in antic­i­pa­tion of fur­ther advance­ment of human rights,” he said. “Nei­ther have they shown any will­ing­ness to reform the entrenched, high­ly oppres­sive legal sys­tem.” 

The inde­pen­dent expert not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment has not restored the civ­il polit­i­cal rights of the released polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, and point­ed out that “the polit­i­cal­ly con­strued crim­i­nal cas­es against the 2010 pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ales Mikhale­vich and jour­nal­ist Ali­ak­san­dr Alesin con­tin­ue, just as the impris­on­ment of cul­tur­al activist Mikhail Zham­chuzh­ny.” 

“The ban on entry into the coun­try has been upheld against Belaru­sian human rights activist Ale­na Tanka­cho­va, and no safe re-entry has been grant­ed for those forced to leave the coun­try due to polit­i­cal per­se­cu­tion,” Mr. Haraszti said, adding that reg­is­tra­tion of human rights orga­ni­za­tions ‘For Fair Elec­tions’, Vias­na, and oth­ers “has been repeat­ed­ly reject­ed on flim­sy admin­is­tra­tive rea­sons.” 

“Ceas­ing all these arbi­trary per­se­cu­tions would only take polit­i­cal will in this high­ly cen­tral­ized sys­tem”, he said. “How­ev­er, the nec­es­sary changes need go much fur­ther than a lenient approach to exist­ing oppres­sive reg­u­la­tions. The Gov­ern­ment of Belarus should engage in a broad reform to bring leg­is­la­tion in com­pli­ance with its inter­na­tion­al human rights oblig­a­tions.” 

The Spe­cial Rap­por­teur high­light­ed that Belarus has for twen­ty years been the only coun­try in Europe where there is no oppo­si­tion in par­lia­ment. Nev­er­the­less, he said, “the forth­com­ing par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in 2016 will also be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the author­i­ties to attest of their com­mit­ment to reform.” 

“I stand ready to coop­er­ate with the author­i­ties to ensure that free and fair par­lia­men­tary elec­tions lead to the for­ma­tion of a strong, plu­ral­is­tic leg­isla­tive body. Such steps would speak for the will­ing­ness of the author­i­ties to improve the human rights sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try, and to work toward abid­ing by inter­na­tion­al stan­dards,” Mr. Haraszti con­clud­ed.