"After the expulsion of Alena Tankachova Belarus authorities will only increase the level of nonconfidence to them"

The head of the Human rights center "Viasna" and Vice President of FIDH Ales Bialiatski considers the government's decision on deprivation of residence permit and probable expulsion from the country of his colleague Alena Tankachova as reprisals against active human rights defender, who works professionally for the benefit of Belarus.
"The political implication of this decision is obvious. Alena Tankachovaisknown as an active human rights defender. Her organization is doing monitoring of the situation with freedom of association, freedom of information and the dissemination of information. She repeatedly has fundamentally spoken on human rights in Belarus, criticizing the government, but has always done it in a calm, correct manner. Alena is a professional lawyer; she knows well Belarusian law as well as international human rights norms. And, in principle, there are not so much of such professional people who are working for the benefit of Belarus not for the first year. Nevertheless, it was decided a political decision against her personally and against the whole civil society in Belarus.

With the forthcoming of the presidential elections, authorities are trying to clean up the human rights field and reduce the possibility of election monitoring and criticism, so protect themselves from potential active work of the Belarusian human rights defenders. But it is very sshortsighted decision. I think that such an act - expulsion of Alena Tankachovafrom Belarus - they will only increase the level of nonconfidenceto themselves and their actions.

In this situation, we, human rights activists, should be jointly and through all the possible channels through all the possible mechanisms to raise this question, drawing attention to the situation with Alena Tankachovanot only from civil society side but also from the side of Belarusian society in general.

In addition, we are going to attract the attention of our colleagues- human rights defenders from other countries, as well as those of international organizations, which have Belarus as a member - the OSCE, the UN, in order to show the injustice of the decision of the Belarusian authorities and try to influence in any way that they change its decision and give Alena Tankachovaopportunity to continue to live in Belarus ", - commented Ales Bialiatski.
Recall the question of expulsion from the territory of Belarus of Alena Tankachova, head of the Center for Legal Transformation - Lawtrend, will be decided on November 5th.