Lazavik chooses not to visit Vienna

Only Yarmoshyna will visit the OSCE conference in Vienna: Lazavik “has a lot of work to do ahead of the September election”.

A secretary of the Central Election Commission of Belarus (CEC), Mikalai Lazavik, confirmed to BelaPAN news agency he and CEC head Lidzia Yarmoshyna received invitations to a meeting on democratic elections and election observation organized by  the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Vienna on July 12 – 13.

The  information that Yarmoshyna and Lazavik, both banned from entering the EU countries for fraudulent elections, were invited to the OSCE meeting in Austria was spread last week by charter97.org website with a link to an anonymous source. The news provoked a wide response in the media.

“As a rule, such conferences gather heads of central election commissions of OSCE member states, heads of international organizations for election monitoring and top officials of the OSCE and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights,” Lazavik noted.

According to him, the CEC heads took part in similar conferences previous years. A travel ban imposed on the CEC officials impedes “testablishing proper contacts with our colleagues form European countries,” the CEC secretary said. “For example, I was not able to visit a meeting of central election commission heads in Moldova last year,” Lazavik said.

“This time, the OSCE leadership seems to have a desire to receive invitations to observe the election in Belarus, so we were invited to the meeting,” he supposed.

The CEC secretary said both he and Lidzia Yarmoshyna received visas to Austria, but only Yarmoshyna would fly to Vienna: Lazavik had to control the commission that has much work ahead of the “parliamentary election” in September.

It should be noted that the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly adopted a harsh resolution on Belarus on July 7. The document calls to immediately release and rehabilitate all political prisoners; respect freedom of movement of Belarusian citizens, including political activists, allowing them to travel in Belarus and abroad; put an end to harassment of representatives of civil society, trade unions, independent media and human rights groups and other demands.