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Three more Russian rights defenders told to leave Belarus

Three Russian human rights defenders were ordered to leave Belarus before Saturday midnight as the authorities continued their crackdown on the Observation Mission of the International Committee for Monitoring the Human Rights Situation in Belarus.

Lyubov Zakharova, Yekaterina Korostelyova and Irina Paikacheva were served with the orders by the migration authorities after their arrest at an apartment in Minsk late on May 6.

According to representatives of the Observation Mission, the police said that the women had not been arrested but had been “invited to a police department for a conversation.”

The Russian rights activists were released at around Friday midnight and ordered to leave Belarus within 24 hours. The migration authorities explained that the women were on an entry ban list.

The women arrived in Minsk about a week before to observe the trials of post-election protesters. Two of them were briefly detained by police on May 4.

The incident came hours after the Russian foreign ministry expressed regret over the Belarusian authorities’ move to deport two other Russian human rights defenders earlier this week. According to Aleksandr Lukashevich, spokesman for the Russian ministry, Viktoriya Gromova and Aleksandr Mnatsakanyan were ordered to leave Belarus “without well-motivated explanations.” He stressed that the string of deportations testified to the Belarusian government’s disregard for its international obligations and Russia’s official position. Moscow expects such deportations to stop, Mr. Lukashevich said.

Yury Dzhibladze, a representative of the International Committee for Monitoring the Human Rights Situation in Belarus and a member of the human rights council under the aegis of the Russian president, accused the Belarusian authorities of interfering with the activities of the human rights mission, which he said was in violation of international law and Belarus’ obligations in the framework of the UN and the OSCE. He stressed that the human rights mission was acting in full compliance with laws and warned that the Belarusian authorities’ actions were leading to self-isolation.

Ten Russian and Ukrainian activists involved with the human rights mission were either told to leave Belarus or turned away at the Belarusian border in the past two months.