BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

29/01/2007

Belarus Helsinki Committee shuts down office

Minsk/Washington - The Belarus branch of the human rights NGO Helsinki Committee shut down its office on Monday, effectively ending the presence of one of the last independent watch groups in the former Soviet republic.

'We have removed everything that we could remove, but there were some objects (in the Minsk office) that we could not get out in time,' said Oleg Gulak, director of the committee's Belarus group.

Belarus' authoritarian government in late December cancelled a rental lease on an office used by the NGO in the Belarusian capital. The group by law had been obliged to evacuate the premises by January 20.

The lost of the rental space did not mean Helsinki Watch would cease working in Belarus, Gulak claimed.

'We will search for another legal address, in the centre of Minsk or perhaps in another town,' he told the Belapan news agency. 'We have not ceased our operations.'

Belarus' authoritarian leader President Aleksander Lukashenko in recent months has targeted Helsinki Watch and similar human rights protection NGOs for state-sponsored pressure, on grounds their efforts 'interfere with Belarusian internal affairs.'

Practically all office space in Belarus is either owned by the Belarusian government, or controlled via tax inspections and police checks.

Most activities commonly associated with human rights watch work - for example election or court monitoring - are specifically banned by Belarusian law, unless the monitors are employed by an NGO with a legal address.

A US government spokesman reacted quickly to the news of the eviction, calling it an 'attack by the Belarusian authorities on independent civil society (which) underscores the steady deterioration of the human rights situation in the country.'

A former collective farm boss, Lukashenko runs Belarus almost unchallenged, except for a weak and splintered opposition. Lukashenko's strong-arm government has isolated Belarus from normalized diplomatic relations with most developed nations - something Lukashenko has said 'Belarus does not need.'

c 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Source:

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/europe/news/article_1253209.php/Belarus_Helsinki_Committee_shuts_down_office

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