Viasna representative speaks at Belarus hearings in PACE

Valiantsin Stefanovich has presented the position of Belarusian human rights defenders in the course of a discussion on the situation of human rights and development of democracy in Belarus after last year’s parliamentary elections, which was held on January 24 in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg.

Together with a representative of the HRC "Viasna", the hearing was attended by two deputies of the lower chamber of the Belarusian parliament, Andrei Naumovich, chairman of the Standing Commission on Human Rights, National Relations and Mass Media and head of the working group on the death penalty, as well as a member of the opposition United Civil Party Hanna Kanapatskaya.

The meeting was opened by the PACE Special Rapporteur on Belarus Andrea Rigoni, who emphasized certain progress in cooperation with the official Minsk, in particular, the election of two opposition parliament members and the holding in Minsk of two international conferences on the death penalty.

Valiantsin Stefanovich said that there were no systemic changes that would indicate an improvement in the human rights situation in Belarus. Introducing the situation, he referred to Viasna’s annual review of human rights situation in 2016.

“I told about the ‘soft practices’, when, instead of the violent crackdown on unauthorized public gatherings and the arrests of their participants, there was a dramatic increase in the number of administrative fines imposed on activists for participating in peaceful assemblies. I also focused on the issue of forced labor, which is currently expanding, including in connection with the implementation of Presidential Decree No. 3, according to which citizens can be punished with administrative arrest and an obligation to work in case they fail to pay a special fee,” he said.

Stefanovich separately spoke about the issue of the death penalty:

“I said it's good that there is a dialogue on this issue and international conferences are organized, but it should be noted that all this is happening against the background of the active use of the death penalty. During the year, four people were executed and four new death sentences were handed down, two of which are still on death row.”

Among the questions to the speakers, Valiantsin Stefanovich mentioned a question from a representative of Armenia, who asked about his attitude towards the extradition from Belarus of a Russian-Israeli blogger Alexander Lapshin.

“I replied that from the point of view of human rights defenders this is a totally inacceptable practice — to punish bloggers when their work does not pose a threat to national security or public order. And even more so — to extradite the person to the country, which has announced that it is ready to punish him. This is unacceptable in respect of any state,” Stefanovich said.

When asked if women's rights are violated in Belarus, he said:

“I said that in addition to the fact that in Belarus there is no anti-discrimination legislation, there are presidential decrees that violate, in particular, women's rights — Decree No. 3 “On prevention of social dependency”, providing for the payment of a charge to finance government expenses, and Decree No. 18 “On additional measures of state protection of children in dysfunctional families”, which introduced the concept of a ‘liable person”. Both legal acts are subject to sharp criticism of human rights activists.”

In conclusion of his speech, Stefanovich said that the Belarusian human rights community calls upon the authorities to be engaged in a full-fledged dialogue and cooperation on human rights issues to improve the situation, which is certainly in the interests of the Belarusian society — a real change and real improvement.