The Human Rights Center “Viasna”

Before the rally of solidarity that was to start in Kastrychnitskaya Square of Minsk on 5 May in the evening, several street cleaning machines arrived to the scene. For some time people couldn’t stay on the square, as they risked to be showered by water.

On 4 May the former political prisoners Artsiom Dubski Andrei Kim, Alexander Kazulin, Mikhail Marynich, Siarhei Parsiukevich, Siarhei Skrabets and Mikalai Statkevich, the politicians Liavon Barsheuski andViachaslau Siwchyk, the entrepreneur Ales Makayeu and the youth activists Mikalai Dzemidzenka, Nasta Palazhanka and Andrei Tsianiuta declared a hunger-strike.

Policemen in mufti beat the youth leader Andrei Kim near Tsentralny district court of Minsk, where the political prisoner Alexander Barazenka was tried. Kim was beaten when Barazenka was being taken out of the court and the people who came to support him started chanting ‘Freedom!’ and ‘Long Live Belarus!’ Three policemen in mufti assaulted him.

This year 14 persons were accused of organization of mass riot at the protest action of entrepreneurs which was held on 21 January. One of them, Andrei Kim, was also accused of threatening with violence to a policeman and was sentenced to 1,5 years of jail. Two more, Anton Koipish and Uladzimir Siarheyeu, were punished with fines. One person remains abroad and therefore still has not received any punishment. The rest of the 14 were sentenced to different terms of personal restraint.

Human Rights Watch is an international, nonpartisan, nongovernmental human rights organization with offices around the world, including New York, London, Berlin, Geneva, Brussels, Moscow, and Tashkent. Its Europe and Central Asia division has monitored and urged compliance with the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords in signatory countries and with international human rights law since the organization was formed in 1978. We are writing to express our profound concern about the recent arrests and disproportionate sentences of 10 youth activists for participating in a peaceful, but unsanctioned, protest on January 10, 2008. We are especially concerned about Andrei Kim, who is among these ten and who was arrested at a subsequent peaceful protest on January 21. He was charged with violations related to both protests and received a disproportionately harsh sentence for offences based on what we believe to be political reasons.

The cassation complaint concerns 10 of the 13 tried activists and will be considered by Minsk cit court on 22 July.

Artsiom Lastavetski, Young Front activist from Baranavichy, who is serving 7-day arrest for handing out portraits of political prisoner Andrei Kim, was guarded to another trial from a detention center.

Siarhei Parsiukevich has found himself without money and food after he was transferred to the Shklou penal colony. According to his wife, Vitsebsk entrepreneurs have recently attended the prison to pass him a food parcel, but the administration of the colony refused to accept it, RFE/RL reports.