English

Human rights activist downplays influence of government-organized NGOs

 

Organizations created by the Belarusian government to look like NGOs defending human rights will not manage to change the West's opinion of the situation in Belarus, said Valyantsin Stefanovich, deputy chairman of the Vyasna human rights group.

He was commenting on a report that a representative of what was described as a human rights organization under the aegis of Pushkin Brest State University attended a session of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) in Strasbourg in April.

In an interview with the opposition news website charter97.org, Mr. Stefanovich said that representatives of Belarusian government-organized non-governmental organizations regularly attended international events.

"Why Europe invites these people is a question that should be put to it," he was quoted as saying. "Europeans probably thought that this was an NGO or an association of academia Or maybe it was an attempt to make the delegation more balanced."

Mr. Stefanovich recalled an event organized by the Council of Europe where a representative of the pro-government Belarusian Union of Women was in attendance. "The most interesting fact was that she was also a deputy chair of the Constitutional Court of Belarus. Maybe the West believes that there should be some pluralism," he said. //BelaPAN