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Activists to protest Yarmoshyna's presence at OSCE conference in Vienna

Activists planned to stage a demonstration in front of the OSCE office in Vienna on Thursday and Friday to protest the presence of Belarus' top election official at a conference held inside the building.

Lidziya Yarmoshyna, head of the central election commission, had been granted a visa to attend the July 12-13 Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Democratic Elections and Election Observation despite being on the European Union's visa blacklist.

The demonstrations were expected to take place from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. on Thursday and from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday.

An organizer told BelaPAN that there were to be Belarusians among the protesters.

The demonstrations were to highlight election fraud in Belarus, "where not a single electoral campaign has been recognized as fair and open since Lidziya Yarmoshyna took over as head of the central election commission in 1996," the activist said. //BelaPAN