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Belarusian authorities refuse to discuss Byalyatski's case with UN Human Rights Committee

 

The Belarusian government has refused to maintain correspondence with the UN Human Rights Committee about the case of imprisoned human rights defender Ales Byalyatski, his associate, Valyantsin Stefanovich, told BelaPAN.

On June 19, the UN Human Rights Committee sent a copy of Mr. Byalyatski's complaint about his prison sentence to the Belarusian government, which was expected to provide a reply to the Committee, Mr. Stefanovich said. Instead, Belarus' permanent mission to the UN Office in Geneva notified the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights that Belarus would not discuss Mr. Byalyatski's individual communication with the UN Human Rights Committee and would not consider its decisions on the communication binding or valid.

The mission explained that there were no "legal grounds" for considering Mr. Byalyatski's complaint, and that the Belarusian government did not recognize the Committee's rules of procedure.

According to Mr. Stefanovich, the government's refusal to cooperate with the UN human rights body over Mr. Byalyatski's case constitutes a violation of an optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. "As the UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly pointed out, every country that signs the protocol is required to cooperate with the Committee," he explained. "As for the procedural rules, it is the human rights body's prerogative to set them."

Mr. Stefanovich stressed that the UN Human Rights Committee would consider Mr. Byalyatski's complaint despite the Belarusian government's decision to ignore it.

On November 24, 2011, Ales Byalyatski, leader of a human rights group called Vyasna and vice president of the International Federation for Human Rights, was sentenced to four and a half years in prison on a charge of large-scale tax evasion. The charge stemmed from information about his bank accounts abroad, which was thoughtlessly provided by authorities in Lithuania and Poland under interstate legal assistance agreements. During his trial, Mr. Byalyatski insisted that the money transferred by various foundations to his bank accounts abroad had been intended to finance Vyasna’s activities and therefore could not be viewed as his income subject to taxation. // BelaPAN