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Human rights group Vyasna shows its new Minsk office to journalists

Vyasna (Spring), an unregistered Belarusian human rights organization, on April 1 showed journalists its new office in Minsk, BelaPAN said.

The organization's former office was confiscated in November 2012. A year earlier, Vyasna Chairman Ales Byalyatski was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and the confiscation of property, including the apartment that had housed the office since 2000.

Speaking to the invited journalists, Vyasna Deputy Chairman Valyantsin Stefanovich expressed hope that the new office would be "just as open and public" as the former one.

According to Mr. Stefanovich, it was very difficult for Vyasna to find a new office to rent. Under the current circumstances, only a person who "lives on the Moon" and has no family or business in Belarus could rent out an apartment to the organization, he said.

“As luck has it, the owner of this apartment doesn’t live in Belarus and is not a citizen of this country at all,” he said. “We’ve been granted the broadest possible rights and powers to use the apartment.”

Although Vyasna does not have state registration, its activities are entirely legal, he stressed. In its most recent resolution, the UN Human Rights Council says that national governments should not only refrain from interfering in the activities of human rights organizations but also create favorable conditions for them, he said.

Mr. Stefanovich added that the resolution also demanded an end to the "financial strangulation" of human rights groups around the world.

Vyasna will use its new office to help victims of human rights violations and monitor election campaigns in cooperation with the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, Mr. Stefanovich said.
Vyasna currently draws up its final report on the 2012 House of Representatives elections, he noted.

The organization will observe the 2014 local elections in Belarus, however uninteresting they may be to the general public, and work harder to educate people and provide them with information, Mr. Stefanovich said.

“In 2015, we’ll naturally monitor the presidential election,” he added.