The Human Rights Center “Viasna”

Brest human rights defender Uladzimir Vialichkin has lodged a complaint with the Constitutional Court, appealing a decision by the city’s executive committee that imposed inadmissible restrictions on the freedom of peaceful assembly.

All information concerning the analysis of penal law and penal system monitoring will be published in a thematic section on the website of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”.

The section’s expert is lawyer Pavel Sapelka.

Here is an article by Pavel Sapelka, dealing with the urgency of the issue of human rights violations against people in custody, those serving sentences and held in other institutions.

The international foundation for the protection of human rights defenders Front Line Defenders issued a protest statement concerning the unlawful travel ban to Aleh Hulak, Hary Pahaniaila and Valiantsin Stefanovich.

On 4 May the deputy head of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” Valiantsin Stefanovich applied to the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Belarus with the demand to bring a criminal case.

The chairman of a Swedish human rights initiative Östgruppen Martin Uggla has been denied an entry visa to Belarus.

In Brest, human rights defenders held a round table to mark the beginning of the campaign "Stop 1210" aimed at the protection of freedom of peaceful assemblies.

“We ask you to use all of your power to foster the release of our colleague Ales Bialiatski held in detention in Belarus,” says an appeal passed to Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev in his meeting with the Presidential Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights on 28 April.

It was 16 years ago, when after a wave of brutal arrests during the traditional Chernobyl Way march a group of activists started collecting and disseminating information on the detainees, trying to give them financial support. This is how “Viasna-96” was founded, whose priority was providing assistance to the victims of political repressions and sharing information on these repressions.

“People cannot be restricted in their right to travel abroad, expect for the cases when the decision has been enforced by a court,’ says Valentin Gefter, Director of the Institute of Human Rights, Member of the Presidential Council for the Promotion of Civil Society and Human Rights, in his interview with the web-site of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”.

“We view their release as the first step by the Belarusian authorities taken as a result of the European Union’s reaction to the situation in the country,” says deputy chair of the Human Rights Center “Viasna” Valiantsin Stefanovich in his comments on the recent release of former presidential candidate Andrei Sannikau and his election aide Dzmitry Bandarenka.