The Human Rights Center “Viasna”

Members of the Ukrainian scientific and pedagogical fellowship "Berehynya", officially registered in Belarus, intended to hold a literary event in the village of Misiatsichy in Pinsk district of Homel region, dedicated to the 100-year anniversary of the birthday of the Ukrainian writer Fedor Odrach, born in this region. Ukrainian scientists who study the writer's work, were to come to the event.

A wave of of the so-called “presidential check-ups” swung across Pinsk. This time the controllers check medical institutions. In particular, they check whether the personnel comes to work in time and whether any medics are absent at their working places during the working hours.

On 14 April residents of Pinsk held a mournful action dedicated to victims of the 11 April terrorist act in Minsk. The action took place in a small square which was created to mark the day of the town. People lit candles near a symbolic chapel.

Electoral precinct #30 in Pinsk shows an unusually high turnout in comparison to other precincts. The precinct is situated in Pinsk Medical College. 1,055 electors are registered there. 211 of them (or 20% of the total number) cast their votes on 14 December.

The official website of the Pinsk Town Executive Committtee www.pinsk.by published an article about the opening of a regional branch of the public reception room of President of the Republic of Belarus A.Lukashenka in the building of the local branch of the ‘state NGO’ Belaya Rus.

The places of work of some members of election commissions are still a secret even for themselves. For instance, the representative of the Belarusian Popular Front Aliaksandr Ramanovich, a member of the Pinsk precinct election commission #26 tried to find about the places of work of other members of the commission in order to check the legality of the formation of the commission (according to the law, the share of state officials in an election commission cannot exceed 1/3 of the total number of members). However, the commission chairperson refused to answer this question.

The precinct commissions of Pinsk consist mainly of representatives of the labor collectives of the enterprises where the commissions are situated. Such conclusion can be made after looking through the lists of the PEC members that were uploaded to the website www.pinsk.by. For instance, here we draw the list of members of PEC #57, 12 out of 13 members of which are workers of different department of a branch republican enterprise Brestenerha – the Pinsk electricity supply networks who were nominated to the PEC by the labor collective of the enterprise, and the 13th - is also a worker of the Pinsk electricity supply networks who was nominated to the commission by the Belarusian Republican Youth Union.

On 3 November the Pinsk Town Executive Committee held a sitting to form the precinct commissions in Pinsk. Representatives of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee and representatives of opposition political parties were present there.

On 1 November the joint sitting of the Pinsk District Executive Committee and the Presidium of the Pinsk District Council on formation of precinct election commissions took place. The opposition parties and democratic NGOs didn’t nominate any representatives to the precinct commissions, that’s why the ‘formation’ of all 70 commissions took very little time, a little more than 5 minutes.

A notice about introduction of amendments to the ruling of the Pinsk District Executive Committee About determining the places that are banned for picketing aimed at collecting signatures was published in edition #80 of the state-owned newspaper Polesskaya Pravda only 12 days after the introduction of these amendments.