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Belarusian human rights defenders to complain to UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

Belarusian human rights defenders will complain to the chairperson-rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention over arrests and rearrests of members of environmental and anarchist associations in the country, human rights activist Valyantsin Stefanovich told reporters in Minsk on Wednesday, as quoted by BelaPAN.

According to him, people were initially arrested on suspicion of involvement in an August 30 firebomb attack on the Russian embassy. Since regulations allow detention without a charge for no more than three days and 10 days by authorization of a prosecutor, after the expiration of three days, they were named suspects in an arson attack on a Belarusbank office on April 30 and, after another three days, they became suspects in an April 30 attack on the House of Trade Unions in Minsk, in which a window was broken and two fireworks were thrown in, or an attack on the detention center on Akrestsina Street, in which two bottles containing a flammable substance were thrown at the center’s metal door and wall on the night between September 5 and 6.

A total of about 30 people have already undergone detention over the embassy attack, according to Mr. Stefanovich. Many of them were released and then rearrested. For instance, Mikalay Dzyadok was arrested seven times, each time for 72 hours and each time as a suspect in a different incident, and therefore he spent a total of 21 days in detention, although no charge was brought against him, Mr. Stefanovich said.

As a matter of fact this new method allows the police to detain people for an unlimited period of time, he said. “We view this practice as arbitrary detention,” he stressed.

“Explosions, arson attacks and other things bordering on acts of terrorism occur in our country from time to time and neither of such offenses in recent years, since an explosion in the building of the Savetski District Court in Minsk in 1996, has been solved by our doughty law-enforcement agencies,” said Aleh Hulak, chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee. “But each such incident is followed by massive arrests and massive violations of human rights.”

The Belarusian police “cannot act within the law and perform their functions by legal methods,” Mr. Hulak said. “This certainly worries us, as people’s rights are violated and, most importantly, this doesn’t help prevent new such incidents. People who do such things may feel that they may escape punishment.”