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Swedish MP Christian Holm becomes head of OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Working Group on Belarus

Swedish MP Christian Holm has been appointed chairperson of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly's Ad Hoc Working Group on Belarus.

"I am glad and honored to have been appointed chairman of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Ad Hoc Working Group on Belarus," Mr. Holm says on Facebook. "Now we will continue the work for a free, democratic and open Belarus!"

Mr. Holm's predecessor, Uta Zapf of Germany, headed the Group since 2002. In March 2013, she announced her resignation, explaining that she had decided not to run in Bundestag elections scheduled for the fall.

Mr. Holm is known for his severe criticism of the Belarusian government. He was planning to visit Belarus in March 2011 at the invitation of Alyaksey Yanukevich, chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front, but he was denied an entry visa.

Mr. Holm is the author of a resolution on Belarus adopted by the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly in July 2013. The resolution called on the Belarusian government to release and exonerate all political prisoners immediately and unconditionally.

The resolution deplored the limited cooperation between the Belarusian government and many of the OSCE’s institutions, as well as the limited cooperation with the Assembly’s Ad Hoc Working Group on Belarus, which had not been invited to visit Minsk since 2010.

Viktar Huminski, deputy chairman of the House of Representatives of Belarus, subsequently called for the Working Group to be dissolved. He claimed that there for no need for its existence.

The Group was set up in October 1998 in order to assist in the development of democracy in Belarus and facilitate dialogue between the government and opposition forces in the country.