In Ashmyany policemen detained a car with members of Alyaksandr Milinkevich’s team: Syarhei Malchyk, Viktar Sazonau and Anatol Khatsko. The politicians were heading for Smarhon for the meeting with local democratic activists and creation of the headquarters of the Belarusian democratic candidate for presidency.

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The Administration of Moscow region of Minsk left without consideration the application for re-registration of the church “New Life”, the official letter stated. The letter tells the reasons for another refusal to re-register the church. The application allegedly has not been signed by all members of the community, the original technical passport of the building had not been attached, and so on.

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On November 23 in Mahilyou a court trial in the case of the activist of the Zubr movement Andrei Paluda, who together with another member of the movement Yauhen Suvorau was detained on November 16 by traffic policemen and later charges with violation of the article 156 of the Administrative Code of Belarus (petty hooliganism). Despite of the fact that the testimony of the policemen are incongruent, one of whom said openly that he had been ordered to detain Paluda’s car, the judge of Lenin district of Mahilyou Karalyou ruled to fine Andrei Paluda one basic unit.

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The case of the political prisoner Syarhei Skrabets is under additional investigation by the Supreme Court. Te Radio Svaboda was informed about that by the lawyer Aleh Dubavets, who is as before in charge of the case of the well-known oppositional politician, former deputy and the head of the parliamentarian group “Respublika”. As said by the lawyer, the case is to stay by investigators until January 3, 2006.

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The leader of the democratic opposition of Belarus Alyaksandr Milinkevich continues stump over the country. Today he has arrived to Babrujsk, where the meetings with the local democratic activists and town-dwellers, a hot line with the citizens and a press-conference were to take place. However, as the press-center of the Charter’97 was informed, two hours before the event the light and phone were disconnected in a private house of one of the Babrujsk activists of opposition, where the telephone hot line was to take place.

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Alyaksandr Lukashenka has voiced a hope that the Belarusian “parliamentarians” will support him at the presidential elections in 2006, explaining the situation in Belarus and abroad to the voters. “You should become real ideologists in our state, as you know what’s going on here [in the highest instances] and what is going on there [in the society]. You should become ideologists, especially now, in this period difficult for our country. It is to become even more difficult before the presidential elections,” A. Lukashenka said, addressing the members of the presidium of the “council of republic” and members of the “chamber of representatives”.

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Yesterday in Minsk Alyaksandr Lukashenka answered the questions of Russian journalists. An opportunity to participate in the press conference was afforded to representatives of provincial mass media, in particular, to reporters of the “Bryanskiy Rabochiy” (“Bryansk Worker”), “Kuznetskiy Rabochiy” (“Kuznetsk Worker”), “Severnoe Siyanie” (“Polar Lights”), “Kirovskaya Pravda” (“Kirov Truth”), “Pskovskaya Pravda” (Pskov Truth), “Northern Truth”, and to journalists of the newspapers “Zavtra” (“Tomorrow”), “Sovetskaya Rossiya” (“Soviet Russia”), “Narodnyj Kontrol” (“People’s Control”) and “Trudovaya Rossiya” (“Labour Russia”). About 80 journalists arrived to talk to the Belarusian leader. The official name of the event was a “press-tour”.

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Ivatsevichy regional postal communications center (RPCC) stopped subscription for independent Ivatsevichy-based newspaper “Gazeta dlia Vas”. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper Lidziya Tsalujka found out about that on November 23 from the workers of the RPCC, who were referring to the written instruction from higher authorities, who had ordered not to allow subscription “until further advised”.

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Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko rebuffed the mere chances of introducing a post of the president into the Russia-Belarus Union State. Lukashenko made this statement over the news conference held for Russia’s media yesterday. Minsk will never back up establishment of any Union State with Russia “to the detriment of its sovereignty,” Lukashenko said, signaling he goes against the Russia’s draft of the constitution in an effort to avoid complete dependence on Moscow.

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Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko said on Wednesday that the U.S. president George Bush was behind the “sponsored” collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Speaking to Russian journalists in the Belarus capital of Minsk, Lukashenko called the collapse of the Soviet Union a tragic mistake, the RIA-Novosti agency reported.

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Poland`s two leading newspapers blacked out large sections of their front pages Wednesday in an eye-catching protest against media repression in neighboring Belarus. The main pages of Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita looked as if a censor had taken a black marker to them, with most text and photographs crossed out. The two papers were joining a protest led by Amnesty International.

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Lenin once said that capitalists were so cynical that they would sell the Soviets the rope with which they would hang them. Lenin and communism have passed away, but that cynical indifference to suffering when profits are involved remains. Belarus provides a glaring example. The European Parliament has consistently denounced Belarus as Europe’s last dictatorship, yet EU member governments continue business as usual with Aleksander Lukashenka, the country’s wayward and near lunatic despot.

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