Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

In late September the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) considered the overall political situation in Belarus, including its adherence to various civil and political rights. In doing so, PACE rebuffed any notion that Belarus’ special guest status in the Assembly would be restored, stating in Resolution 1306: "At present, Belarus shows severe democratic deficits and it does not yet meet the Council of Europe’s relevant standards. The electoral process is imperfect, human rights violations continue, civil society remains embryonic, the independence of the judiciary is doubtful, local government is underdeveloped and, last but not least, Parliament has limited powers."

Among PACE’s wider concerns were freedom of expression, including press freedom, and the country’s unresolved "disappearances". PACE stated: "[R]ecent developments in Belarus also give rise to growing concern regarding freedom of expression and of the media. The independent media continue to be subject to increasing pressure and harassment from the Belarusian authorities. The recent convictions of journalists for their opinions are unacceptable" (see below). In this respect PACE called on the Belarusian authorities to reconsider cases of imprisonment on political grounds, including those relating to convicted journalists.

Echoing the concerns of various other international bodies PACE stated that it was "... seriously concerned about the lack of progress regarding the cases of missing people" and "[d]espite assurances by the Belarusian authorities about ongoing investigations into their cases no reliable information let alone any concrete results are available at present". Resolution 1306, adopted by PACE on 27 September, subsequently resulted in the establishment of an investigative ad-hoc sub-committee of the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights to probe into the circumstances surrounding the "disappearances". Member of the Russian Duma, Sergey Kovalev, was appointed chairman of the ad-hoc sub-committee, which reportedly met in September as well as in November to examine the investigation conducted by the authorities into the "disappearances".

Freedom of expression

The authorities continued to resort heavily to the use of criminal libel against journalists in order to curb the legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression. On 16 September the editor of the independent newspaper, Rabochy, Viktor Ivashkevich was sentenced by a court in Minsk to a two-year term of "restricted freedom" after being convicted of slandering the President in a newspaper article in the pre-election period. The offending article accused the administration of corruption. As a result of the sentence of "restricted freedom" Viktor Ivashkevich will be subjected to forced labour of the authorities’ choosing for the duration of his sentence and will be forced to return to a guarded barracks at a given time each evening. In mid-December he was sent to Baranavichy, 140km south-west of the capital Minsk, where he will serve his sentence. Viktor Ivashkevich’s conviction followed the June 2002 convictions of the Pagonia editor and staff writer Nikolai Markevich and Pavel Mozheiko in Grodno, who were respectively sentenced to two-and-a-half and two-year sentences of "restricted freedom", later reduced by one year on appeal (see AI Index: EUR 01/007/2002). AI considers all three journalists to be prisoners of conscience.

The frequent use of criminal libel against journalists in Belarus resulted in expressions of domestic and international concern. Shortly after Viktor Ivashkevich’s conviction, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media, Freimut Duve, in a press release urged "... the Belarusian authorities to immediately cease its policy of criminal prosecution and intimidation of independent journalists, and to repeal the existing criminal laws on libel and defamation" and called upon "...the authorities to abide by the commitments to freedom of expression and freedom of the media that Belarus has subscribed to as an OSCE participating State". In early September the independent Belarusian Association of Journalists started a national campaign to remove three articles from the Belarusian Criminal Code which criminalize libel and insult. At the end of the year several other individuals were reportedly being investigated on suspicion of having libelled leading state officials, including the prominent opposition journalist Irina Khalip.

Human rights defenders

Human rights defenders continued to be targeted by the authorities for defending and promoting human rights. Like journalists, lawyers were also not immune to prosecution on grounds of criminal libel. Leninsky District Court in Minsk convicted the lawyer, Igor Aksenchik, of criminal libel and sentenced him to an 18-month suspended prison sentence on 11 October. Igor Aksenchik had represented the mother of the missing television cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky during the in camera trial of the four men accused of his abduction and murder earlier in the year (see AI Index: EUR 49/13/2002). Leninsky District Court convicted him of libelling a leading state official widely believed to have been involved in the "disappearance" of Dmitry Zavadsky by publicly naming him in a press interview in February 2002. As a result of his conviction he was expelled from the state-controlled bar association, Collegium of Advocates, from which he had reportedly been suspended in March 2002, preventing him practising a profession as a lawyer.

The prominent human rights lawyer and chairperson of the Human Rights Center, Vera Stremkovskaya, came under renewed pressure from the Belarusian authorities (see AI Index: 49/005/2001). She was informed by Minsk Collegium of Advocates on 30 September that it would not permit her to travel abroad in order to speak about human rights issues in Belarus. Belarusian lawyers must seek official permission from the Collegium of Advocates, of which membership is mandatory, before embarking on foreign travel. At the time of the refusal Vera Stremkovskaya intended to travel abroad in order to take part in two international conferences on democracy and human rights: in Brussels, Belgium on 10-11 October and Seoul, South Korea on 11-14 November. She was later permitted to attend the conferences, albeit only after lengthy negotiations on her behalf and interventions by international lawyers’ and human rights groups. The decision to prevent Vera Stremkovaksya from travelling appeared to have been made shortly after she attended the OSCE’s annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw, Poland, in mid-September where she had spoken negatively about the Collegium of Advocates and the pressure it exerted on human rights lawyers.

Shortly afterwards, the Human Rights Center also appeared to be targeted by the authorities. The Human Rights Center received an official warning from the Justice Department of Minsk City Executive Committee for various alleged violations of the Law on Public Associations. Human rights organizations, like all other associations, are subject to a system of official warning which can result in their closure. In the past AI has expressed concern that warnings have been issued for the most spurious of reasons and the overall system of warnings has been used to unnecessarily regulate as well as harass and pressurize human rights organizations (see AI Index: EUR 49/005/2001). In its official warning to the Human Rights Center the Justice Department of Minsk City Executive Committee stated, among other things, that the organization had violated the Law on Public Associations by using an organizational emblem on the plaque of its offices different to the one officially registered by the organization.

Prisoner of conscience — Professor Yury Bandazhevsky

The health of prisoner of conscience Professor Yury Bandazhevsky reportedly deteriorated in the period under review (see AI Index: EUR 01/007/2002). Galina Bandazhevskaya, who visited her husband in the UZ-15 labour colony in Minsk in early September, stated that she witnessed a dramatic deterioration in Yury Bandazhevsky’s health since her last visit three months previously. She believed that he was suffering from severe depression. His condition was not said to have improved by the time of her next prison visit in early November.