BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

31/01/2007

Belarus Backtracks, Allows Helsinki Committee To Re-open Office

Authoritarian Belarus backtracked on Wednesday, reversing a decision to shut down the local branch office of the human rights NGO Helsinki Committee, the Belapan news agency reported.

The human rights group was evicted from its central Minsk office space on Monday. Aside from the Helsinki Committee, few independent watch groups operate in the former Soviet republic.

The regime reversed its decision to deny the activist NGO a legal address - which would have made illegal almost all human rights defence work by the group - after a meeting between Helsinki Committee representatives and Mikhail Belyaev, a close associate of Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko.

The group received a lease in the same space it had been kicked out of, to run for one year.

"This is a first step by the Belarusian government towards understanding of the European system of values," said Tatiana Prot'ko, a Helsinki Committee spokeswoman.

Pressure by Europe and the US on the Lukashenko regime, in the wake of the Monday eviction, was critical in obliging the Belarusian government to reverse its position, Prot'ko said.

c 2007 DPA

Source:

http://www.playfuls.com/news_10_11518-Belarus-Backtracks-Allows-Helsinki-Committee-To-Re-open-Office.html