2000 press releases

Head of U.S. Mission to OSCE on Belarus (September 20, 2000)

Thank you, Madame Chairperson. First of all, let me say I appreciate my Belarusian colleague's remarks, but unfortunately, our observations over the last several days lead us to a much different conclusion.

When here to attend the Third Technical Conference on August 30, Deputy Foreign Minister Martynov distributed a statement that said that those advocating an election boycott would not be punished.

But on September 13, Belarusian authorities seized over 100,000 copies of the independent trade union newspaper "Rabochy" ("The Worker") for publishing information about the boycott. They also arrested "Rabochy's" Editor-in-Chief, Victor Ivashkevich, legal consultant Dmitry Kastukevich, as well as Yury Budzko, the managing editor of the publishing house where "Rabochy" is printed.

On September 19, despite Mr. Martynov's pledge, and the fact that the electoral law permits advocating a boycott, a Minsk court convicted Mr. Ivashkevich and Mr. Kastukevich of calling for a boycott on the basis of an administrative code provision. While the fines imposed were nominal, 100,000 copies of "Rabochy" were not returned and the militia was also ordered by the court to confiscate all 400,000 copies of this newspaper's edition with information about the boycott.

On September 15 and 16, over twenty individuals were arrested for distributing leaflets advocating an election boycott.

On September 16, as noted in an Advisory and Monitoring Group Spot Report, two unidentified assailants attacked 13th Supreme Soviet Deputy Chairman Anatoly Lebedko at a rally to mark the one-year anniversary of the disappearance of Mr. Gonchar and Mr. Krasovsky. They did this in the presence of numerous uniformed and plainclothes police, who were standing nearby and did nothing to assist Chairman Lebedko or to apprehend the assailants -- who one can only presume was well known to them.

Madame Chairperson, despite the Belarusian Government's professed commitment to free and fair elections, the events of this past week continue to show Belarus moving further away from meeting the four Troika criteria.