Having annihilated the free press and NGOs, the Belarusian regime got down to destroying the human rights watchdog organizations. Yesterday the Minsk city court ruled to liquidate the public organization “Legal Aid to Population”, famous for its investigations into the “show trials”, Nemiga stampede tragedy et cetera. The dangerous precedent has now been set up: Belarus unleashed a campaign, aimed at the complete annihilation of human rights structures. Apparently, the next candidate for closure will be human rights center “Vesna”, which had been checked for no good reason five times over the seven months this year by the Justice Ministry.

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Alexander Lukashenko greeted the chairman of the Defense Committee, secretary-general of the Korean Labor Party Kim Chen Ire with the national holiday – the Day of proclamation of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic, BELTA reports with a reference to the presidential press-service.

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OSCE Chairman-in-Office Jaap de Hoop Scheffer regards the human rights situation in Belarus as “critical” and intends to step up concrete measures at its improvement.

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The National state TV company of Belarus opened a legal department. As BelaPAN was told in the BT press-service, the new department is called to carry out a large-scale legal and consultative support of the company’s activities. The department has already drafted two lawsuits on the protection of BT’s business reputation against the newspaper “The Belarusian Communist. Time and Us” and the “Narodnaya Volya”.

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Three picketers from the Belarusian Freedom Party, who gathered in front of the Russian embassy, were apprehended in Minsk on September 8. BFP activists Yuri Danilov, Vasily Parfenkov and the organization’s chairman Sergei Vysotsky were all delivered to the Central district court of Minsk. The latter, being the picket’s organizer, was sentenced to 10 days of administrative arrest. Yuri Danilov got fined 280,000 rubles, while the case of Vasily Parfenkov, who demanded to be provided with an attorney, was put off till September 11.

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Russia’s raising of prices on pas, transported to Belarus, will surely have most negative impact on the country’s economy, underscored at the Monday press-conference in Minsk deputy head of the second European department of the International Monetary Fund Thomas Richardson.

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The government of Belarus established for the year 2004 “too optimistic” parameters of the country’s social-economic development. Such a viewpoint was shared today at the meeting with journalists by the official from the International Monetary Fund Thomas Richardson. He outlined the results of the IMF mission’s work in Belarus, which analyzed the condition of its economy, examined the forecasted parameters of the macro-economic policy for the following year and evaluated the country’s preparation to the expected formation of the currency union with the Russian Federation.

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