BELARUS NEWS AND ANALYSIS

DATE:

2005-11-23

Freedom of Speech in Belarus

An action under the motto: "Freedom of speech in Belarus" began in Poland today.

The action is initiated by Amnesty International and aims at bringing closer the issue of human rights violation in Belarus. The Belarus opposition and independent journalists suffer repressions from the regime of president Lukashenko, who is in power since 1994.

Independendt media are shut down and journalists are sentenced to prison or forced labour. Penalties for offending the president are common. The action in Poland is joined by popular dailies like Gazeta Wyborcza or Rzeczpospolita, as well as internet portals which blacked out their front pages in protest of the gross violation of press freedom by the authoritarian government of Lukashenko.

Photographs of thousands of Belarus politicians and journalists who had suffered repressions in Belarus can be found in the dailies and will be displayed in Polish cities and at the EU headquarters in Brussels as part of the campaign.

Source:

http://www.poland.pl/news/article,Freedom_of_Speech_in_Belarus,id,202754.htm