The Human Rights Center “Viasna”

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), has received new information and requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Belarus.

A number of constituency election commissions of Minsk have not allowed observers representing the Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections campaign monitoring the procedures of signature verification and checking the papers submitted by nominees.

Aliaksandr Protska, distributor of the Novy Chas independent newspaper, has been detained by Homel police outside the city’s central railway station at about 9 a.m.