BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

21/05/2007

Milinkevich thanks Czechs for averting Minsk's U.N. council entry

By Prague Daily Monitor/CTK /

Prague, May 18 (CTK) - Belarussian opposition leader Alyaksandr Milinkevish today appreciated the stand of former Czech president Vaclav Havel and Czech organisations that joined the international campaign against Belarus's entry into the U.N. Human Rights Council.

He said the rejection of Belarus's candidacy by the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday reflected the world's support to democracy in Belarus.

"We're glad that most U.N. member countries have listened to us, representatives of democratic forces in Belarus, and that they did not support the Belarussian government's candidacy," Milinkevich has written in a statement CTK has at its disposal.

As a result of the U.N. vote, more attention will be paid to the violation of human rights in Belarus, he wrote.

Milinkevich addressed special thanks to Havel (Czechoslovak and later Czech president in 1989-2003), who had personally called on U.N. member countries not to support the authoritarian regime of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko.

Milinkevich also praised Czech NGOs Human Rights Watch, People in Need and Civic Belarus for joining the international campaign against the Belarussian government.

Igor Blazevic, director of the People in Need company's Centre for Democracy and Human Rights, called the U.N. vote's outcome a great success.

"It has sent a clear signal to certain countries in the world where human rights are still being violated," Blazevic said.

He recalled, however, that the newly-elected members of the U.N. Human Rights Council are Egypt, Angola and Qatar, and that countries such as Cuba, China and Algeria, where the situation in the human rights area is problematic, remain the council members.

Lukashenko's Belarus is widely viewed as the last totalitarian regime in Europe.

Source:

http://launch.praguemonitor.com/en/88/czech_politics/6770/