Human rights activists launch campaign to monitor “elections”

“Human rights for free elections” group announced launching a campaign to monitor the “parliamentary election”.

Aleh Hulak, the chair of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC), said at a press conference human rights activists monitor the atmosphere of this year's “election”. “The situation in Belarus is unfavorable for holding elections, because political prisoners still remain in jails, political and civil activists are being detained. An atmosphere of fear reigns in the country,” Aleh Hulak says. “Calls to boycott from certain opposition leaders show that people do not believe in fair elections, don't believe elections perform their function in the state – help to change the government. It devalues elections, but it does not mean we can say today the election will be fraudulent. We'll take an objective approach to monitor the “parliamentary election” to cover all aspects of the current situation.”

The monitoring campaign is expected to be focused on voter turnout. Valyantin Stefanovich, the deputy head of Viasna human rights centre, noted: “The parliamentary election in today's Belarus does not interest people as much as presidential elections, so the authorities can use their methods to artificially raise the number of voters and force them to vote. We need to focus on voter turnout, control figures in election commission reports that should be published by the commission every day.”

“Human rights activists for free election” group plans to involve 400 observers in 106  constituencies. A total of 25,000 observers are expected at the election.

“Not only journalists and the Central Election Commission keep an eye on our activity. The KGB already asked what we would do during the “election”. We'd like the authorized bodies to react to our remarks and take legal actions regarding the violations recorded by us,” the BHC head said.

Though this year's election observation will be difficult, taking into account the fact that Viasna head Ales Byalyatski is in prison and Viasna's office is under threat of confiscation, human rights activists believe they will have a full-scale monitoring campaign.