“Nasha Viasna”: Systematic discrimination of human rights activists is taking place in Belarus

Founders of the human rights organisation state that Belarus does not want to pursue the European course.

On March 2 the Justice Ministry of Belarus decided to deny the state registration to the civil human rights association “Nasha Viasna”, the successor of the liquidated civil association Human Rights Center “Viasna”.

Founders of the civil human rights association “Nasha Viasna” (Ales Byalatski, Ualdzimir L:abkovich, Tatsyana Ravyaka) have written a statement condemning non-recognition of independent organisations by the Belarusian authorities.

The human rights activists state that the registration denial is “is groundless and unlawful”, and is “an open manifestation of systematic politically motivated discrimination of the founders and members of the organization”. Besides, in their statement they say that this denial is another violation of their constitutional right to association and international undertakings in the sphere of human rights, ratified by the Republic of Belarus.

The human rights act stress that the Belarusian authorities are not ready “of the Belarusian authorities to make system changes aimed at further liberalization in the country”.

“On 24 June 2007 the UN Human Rights Committee confirmed that the authorities had violated our rights in this case and ruled that we had the right to adequate means of defense, including renewal of the registration of the organization and compensation. By its decision the Committee also obliged the authorities to take measures for prevention of similar violations in future. The systematic nature of discrimination towards us is confirmed by the fact that it is already the second time when we receive a registration denial: the Ministry of Justice took a similar decision for the first time in September 2007,” the statement of the human rights activists reads.

Founders the “Nasha Viasna” state that by refusing to register the civil human rights association “Nasha Viasna”, the state authorities of Belarus not only demonstrated disrespect to rights of the country’s citizens, but also cynically ignored the international undertakings of Belarus in the sphere of human rights.