Human Rights Developments

Defending Human Rights

The Role of the International Community

The government continued to harass human rights activists and NGOs. A series of unsolved burglaries of NGO offices, in which unknown raiders stole computer equipment, raised suspicion of state involvement.

On December 17, 1999, unknown persons raided the Minsk offices of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, removing three computers that stored the organization's database. Police reportedly reacted with lethargy to the raid, while a previous break-in and robbery four months earlier remained unsolved.

Belarusian authorities continued to harass independent human rights lawyer Vera Stremkovskaia, threatening her with disbarment from the Minsk bar association and interrogating her clients. On May 31, unidentified raiders broke in to the newly established Center for Human Rights, of which she is president, removing computer equipment and a photocopier.

On March 7, Oleg Volchek, head of the Minsk-based Public Legal Aid organization, informed a press conference that his organization was being evicted from its premises for the fourth time in the past eighteen months. He said that the Ministry of Justice had a month earlier revoked his organization's license to provide legal aid to individuals, allowing assistance only to legal entities. The organization had initiated an independent investigation into the fate of Yury Zakharenka and the 1999 Nemiga metro stampede tragedy. On May 20, raiders broke into the Public Legal Aid organization's offices, stealing computer and office equipment.

On September 5, the Belarusian Association of Journalists was forced to abandon an independent press festival in Vitebsk when authorities rescinded permission to use a local community center.