How to help?

How to contribute to the work of International Observation Mission and Committee of International Control over the human rights situation in Belarus?

Now there are several ways to help our groups working in Belarus.


1. To take part in the International Observation Mission in Minsk. The Mission’s main tasks are: to monitor, to attend court hearings, to assist local human rights defenders, to collect and to spread information, etc.

Now we need people of two types:

  • well-known human rights activists and experts, whose participation and status would be important for the Belarusian authorities, journalists, etc.
  • people who have experience in monitoring, observing human rights violations, information support for human rights work, etc. –  to monitor the situation, perform informational provision of its work etc.

If you or your colleagues would like to take part in Mission’s work - from several days to 1-2 weeks - please contact us: [email protected]

2. Join the Committee of international control over the human rights situation in Belarus. Commitette is the community of human rights and civil organizations from different countries. The Committee will develop and provide recommendations to Belarus authorities and international organizations to change the situation in the country based on Observation Mission’s information and evidences.

If your organization wants to become a member of the Committee, please contact us: [email protected]

3. To assist and support of Information centres on the situation in Belarus. Now there are “Information centres” in Kharkov, Kiev and Moscow – which will provide searching and processing of all information, translation into English, working with local media, contact with journalists, etc. We are looking for people who could organize such centres and undertake the work in them in other cities. First of all – Warsaw, Brussels, Vienna, Strasbourg :)

4. If you have time and ability to write texts, to help with translations or web-design – we also would appreciate this :))

5. During long time the Mission’s work in Minsk was built entirely on the personal contribution of time, effort and money of certain people. We would welcome any financial support – primarily to pay for international mobile communications – to call from Ukraine and Russia to Belarust and back, as well as travel and accommodation expenses of Mission in Minsk. If you can help with that – please contact us.

Belarus:

+37533 636 05 00 (МТС)
+37533 340 67 72 (МТС)
+37525 910 28 58 (Life)

Russia:

+7903-656-03-78 (Beeline)

Ukraine:

+38068 410 27 41 (Beeline)
+38063 066 74 65 (Life)

 

The general contact address: [email protected]

News of Belarus

Belarus prisoner release: Same old trick

Good news from Belarus is rare, but last weekend president Alexander Lukashenko pardoned six political prisoners.

For the pardoned, all serving multi-year prison terms for challenging Belarus’ autocracy, this is, to say the least, a relief, and has been welcomed by local democrats and the international community.

Lukashenko has declared his decision an act of “humanity”. But is, in fact, a carefully timed tactical move to sway the European Union at a time of growing domestic and geopolitical pressure.

The question is whether he will succeed this time.

The International Day of Solidarity with Belarus 2015

Seven countries around the world celebrated the International Day of Solidarity with Belarus on August the 4th. Human and civil rights activists, as well as other people who are simply sympathetic with the citizens of Belarus and who share deep concern about their future, took part in online discussions, talked to people on the streets and posted various material in social media in order to raise awareness of countless violations of human rights in Belarus.

Solidarity with civil society in Belarus

4 August is an international day of solidarity with the civil society of Belarus. This day matters, because of the daily pressure against civil society in Belarus.

When a coalition of international civil society organisations, at the initiative of the International Youth Human Rights Movement of Voronezh (Russian Federation), launched the idea of an international solidarity day with civil society in Belarus, the country was coming out of the 2010 presidential election cycle, which symbolically ended with the arrest of the country’s leading human rights defender Ales Bialiatski.

The 4 August is key to Belarus, because of Ales Bialiatski’s arrest on this day in 2011. The day is now a symbol of President Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s repeated practice of arbitrary arrest of voices criticising his way of governing the country.