France met Kulyashou with a law suit

Lawyer William Burdon filed an action against Belarusian Interior Minister Anatoly Kulyashou with a French court.

Mr Burdon is acting on behalf of the initiative Free Belarus Now who accuses Belarus’ powers of torturing political prisoners.

According to the lawyer, the French police must immediately arrest Mr Kulyashou who arrived in Lyon to participate in an Interpol conference. Burdon stressed that investigators must examine Mr Kulyashou’s role in the crack-down of the oppositional demonstrations and further tortures of the people arrested in Minsk.

William Burdon represents a group of the opposition activists who were arrested on 19 December 2010 during the meeting against the forged results of the presidential election.

On that day dozens of thousands of Belarusians went out to the streets to show their protest against the falsified results of the presidential election won by Lukashenka for the fourth time. Special police units were used against the people. Around 700 arrests followed the violent crack-down of the demonstration. Some of the oppositionists, including Lukashenka’s rivals, serve their sentences in prison.

No reaction to the suit against Belarus’ Interior Minister has come from the Belarusian part yet.

The initiative Free Belarus Now has sent a statement to charter97 claiming that Mr Kulyashou is on the list of the Belarusian authorities who are banned from entering the EU after the violent crack-down of the opposition meeting by the Belarusian government which took place after the presidential election 2010.

In September last year Free Belarus Now along with the law firm McCue & Partners LLP announced that they had made a prosecution file publicly available to any government, NGO or private lawyer who wished to prosecute Mr Lukashenko or his cronies if they left Belarus (http://www.mccue-law.com/belarus/). In this case Anatoly Kulyashou, if present on French soil, should now face prosecution in France for the international crimes of torture and hostage taking.

Irina Bogdanova, co-founder of Free Belarus Now, says "How can it be that Belarusian political refugees, who have suffered emotional and physical torture while in KGB prison are on INTERPOL wanted lists. They are detained when travelling in Europe, while Mr Kulyashou , who ordered the brutal th crackdown on peaceful demonstration travels with impunity. On December 19 last year the violent repressions of peaceful opposition amounted to a military Coup d’état and I cannot believe that one of the instigator of this is being welcomed by those who declare themselves keepers of law and order. I call on the French authorities to act swiftly and hold Mr Kulyashou to account for his crimes against the Belarusian people.”

Matthew Jury, Partner of McCue & Partners, says, “If Kulyashou is in France, under the Torture Convention, France should be obliged to take Kulyashou into custody for his part in the torture and hostage-taking of innocent Belarusians. It will only diminish France’s standing and moral authority if it fails to take action. If it does not, then we call on France’s civil society and legal community to take up the responsibility and to enforce the law.”

Natalia Kaliada, co-founder of Free Belarus Now and the Belarus Free Theatre, says,” The French Republic is founded on the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood; today those principles seem very far away. By inviting an agent of the Lukashenko regime, who personally orchestrated mass violent arrests of peaceful demonstrators, over its boarders, France has betrayed all those fighting for democracy and human rights in Belarus. There are 15 political prisoners who remain behind bars in my country in the heart of Europe. These men along with any others were arrested and tortured while in KGB custody in December last year. Today INTERPOL freely welcomes emissaries of Europe’s last Dictatorship and condemns those who stood peacefully against them as criminals.

This hypocrisy seems unthinkable in a modern democracy, I can only hope that INTERPOL and the French authorities will act urgently to salvage their reputations and issue a warrant to arrest Mr Kulyashou for his crimes against the Belarusian people.”