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Participants at Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum in Poznan urge Belarusian authorities to release human rights defender Byalyatski

Participants at the 3rd annual Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum in Poznan, Poland, on November 29 adopted a statement urging the Belarusian authorities to immediately and conditionally release prominent human rights defender Ales Byalyatski

Mr. Byalyatski, the 49-year-old leader of a human rights organization called Vyasna (Spring) and vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, was sentenced last week to four and a half years in prison on a charge of large-scale tax evasion.

The statement called on the EU member countries to take joint measures to ensure the release of Mr. Byalyatski and the other political prisoners Belarus, as the existence of political prisoners in a signatory country of the Eastern Partnership declaration cannot be tolerated.

According to the statement, the tax accusations against Mr. Byalyatski, which stemmed from the disclosure of information about his bank accounts abroad, were used as a pretext to isolate one of the key Belarusian human rights figures. //BelaPAN