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Letter to Ban Ki-moon, The Secretary-General United Nations |
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Sunday, 09 September 2007 |
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People of Belarus need your help in their fight for democracy and independence. They have been oppressed by the dictator Aleksandr Lukashenko for more then 12 years. During his long rule he created a police state where everybody is living in constant fear. Thousands of people who opposed him were imprisoned and some opposition leaders were killed. Lukashenko changed the constitution of the country twice in order to have unlimited power over the people of Belarus and rule them forever. Being imposed on our country by imperial Russia he is following Kremlin’s orders to destroy Belarusian culture and Belarusian state. All Belarusian national symbols where prohibited including the flag and the emblem of the state. The same happened to Belarusian language.
The young people suffered from the oppression the most.
A lot of them were put in prison for their political believes.
Just this month alone three regional young activists of Belarusian movement "Malady Front": Ivan Shila, Nastya Azarka and Yaraslav Grischenya, went on trial.
They are adjudged by the article 193-1 of Criminal Code RB "the organization and activity of the organization which has not passed state registration". At the same time Department of Justice doesn't register the organization because its participants are "criminals and they can’t have positive intentions". But for all that, Belarusian Government makes these young people criminals by arresting them and sending to prison, just because their views are contrary to the "officially accepted".
The article 193-1 with other amendments was included in the Criminal Code by the Belarusian legislature on December 2005, which established a sentence in prison for the activity in the unregistered civic organizations and the criticism of the Belarusian government. It happened before the presidential elections in 2006. By this article the leader of the "Malady Front" Dimitry Dashkevich was jailed for 1.5 year on November 2006. Today’s targets: Nastya, Ivan and Yaraslav are colleagues and friends of Dimitry who at the moment spend almost a year in prison.
Acting on behalf of unregistered political organizations has become a personal first-degree offence to Mr. Lukashenko. Not knowing what to do with young determined activists who speak forbidden Belarusan language and carry traditional Belarusan White-Red-White flags, A. Lukashenko has built lots of prisons to accommodate each non-conformist. The first one captured was Pavel Seviarynec, who dared to protest against falsifications during the referendum of November 2004. Well, Lukashenko had removed the enemy as far as he could from his sight – to a God’s forsaken village of Maloe Sitna in Vitebsk region, where Pavel is still serving his 2-year term.
We don't want our youth to share the same fate, they didn't do anything bad for their country and people.
We want to ask you to demand from Belarusian Government to stop the persecution of young people by political reasons. We also want to ask you to raise the issue of democratization of Belarus at the security consul and by doing that to turn international community’s attention to the shocking violation of human rights in Belarus.
Sincerely,
The people of Belarus |
