European Commissioner discusses EU-Belarus cooperation with human rights defenders

Belaru­sian NGOs and human rights orga­ni­za­tions were rep­re­sent­ed by a board mem­ber of the Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na» Valiantsin Ste­fanovich, Direc­tor of the Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter Vol­ha Smalian­ka, chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Andrei Bas­tunets and the head of the inde­pen­dent trade union REP Henadz Fia­dyn­ich.

The meet­ing focused on var­i­ous aspects of the human rights sit­u­a­tion in Belarus in the con­text of the planned sign­ing of agree­ments on bilat­er­al coop­er­a­tion between Belarus and the Euro­pean Union. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the country’s civ­il and human rights com­mu­ni­ty insist­ed that the Agree­ment reflect­ed human rights issues, not just eco­nom­ic and oth­er rela­tions.

Valiantsin Ste­fanovich not­ed that, as before, the human rights sit­u­a­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by the absence of any pos­i­tive sys­temic change. In Belarus, there are still areas in which, in prin­ci­ple, there has been no progress.

“We see no sig­nals from the gov­ern­ment towards the improve­ment in these areas. First of all, it con­cerns the changes in the elec­toral leg­is­la­tion, as well as the imple­men­ta­tion of the OSCE rec­om­men­da­tions that were made after the lat­est obser­va­tion mis­sion in Belarus,” said the human rights activist.

Ste­fanovich men­tioned the work of the inter­de­part­men­tal group, which was estab­lished back in 2016, but its results have not been made pub­lic so far. Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty sent their pro­pos­als for changes in the elec­toral leg­is­la­tion. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the cam­paign «Human Rights Defend­ers for Free Elec­tions», the chair­man of the Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee Aleh Hulak per­son­al­ly pre­sent­ed them at a meet­ing of the inter­de­part­men­tal group. But noth­ing has been known about its work after the events of the spring of 2017.

Infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed to the Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the OSCE Par­lia­men­tary Assem­bly Kent Härst­edt by the CEC Chair­per­son and the Pres­i­dent of Belarus dur­ing a meet­ing in Min­sk sug­gests that the imple­men­ta­tion of the OSCE rec­om­men­da­tions and amend­ments to the elec­toral leg­is­la­tion is not on the agen­da.

“Thus, the pres­i­den­tial and par­lia­men­tary elec­tions in 2020 will take place in the legal frame­work that we have today. They have been crit­i­cized many times, by both rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the OSCE and human rights activists. Obvi­ous­ly, some elec­tion pro­ce­dures require imme­di­ate ref­or­ma­tion,” Valiantsin Ste­fanovich con­clud­ed.

Mr. Hahn told the rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civ­il and human rights com­mu­ni­ty that dur­ing his meet­ing with Lidziya Yarmoshy­na, head of the Cen­tral Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, she once again said that any changes to the law on elec­tions are only pos­si­ble after amend­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion.

“It’s quite a strange posi­tion, because we do not talk at all about chang­ing the elec­toral sys­tem. And it is not among the list of the ODIHR rec­om­men­da­tions. Some of the rec­om­men­da­tions deal with spe­cif­ic issues of elec­tion pro­ce­dures, in par­tic­u­lar the count­ing of votes. Of course, no changes in the Con­sti­tu­tion are need­ed in order to imple­ment them,” Ste­fanovich said com­ment­ing on the posi­tion of the Belaru­sian EMBs.

The meet­ing also touched upon the lack of progress on the abo­li­tion or a mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty. The human rights activists not­ed that author­i­ties still refer to pub­lic oppo­si­tion, although no work is car­ried out on this issue in Belarus. In the con­text of the planned sign­ing of the Agree­ment, this theme appears par­tic­u­lar­ly acute, because Europe is a death penal­ty free area. The sit­u­a­tion with the death penal­ty in Belarus is con­trary to Euro­pean val­ues.

Vol­ha Smalian­ka, direc­tor of the Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter, not­ed short­com­ings of leg­is­la­tion reg­u­lat­ing the activ­i­ties of non-gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions in Belarus. She also addressed the prob­lem of changes in the leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing peace­ful assem­blies and the announced decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of activ­i­ty on behalf of unreg­is­tered orga­ni­za­tions, which is expect­ed to be replaced with admin­is­tra­tive respon­si­bil­i­ty.

Chair­man of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists Andrei Bas­tunets drew atten­tion to the prob­lems of mass media, as well as the sys­temic per­se­cu­tion of jour­nal­ists work­ing in Belarus with­out accred­i­ta­tion. The new changes in the law «On Mass Media» were dis­cussed at the meet­ing.

The meet­ing also focused on the sub­ject of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against the lead­ers of the inde­pen­dent trade union REP. An appeal in the case will be heard by the Min­sk City Court on Novem­ber 9.