“Viasna” Members Comment on Liquidation Suit

16.09.2003.

Ales Bialiatski, Head of the Board of the Public association “Human Rights Center “Viasna”: “The State wants to take over all functions of the public life organization and purposefully liquidates the organizations that have dealt with juridical support, helped to concrete people in the cases when the State didn’t make it. Representatives of the state, deciding their short-term political tasks, destroy human rights organizations before a political campaign (it may be a referendum). They consciously do harm to Belarusian citizens and people are left without help and support.”

Uladzimir Labkovich, lawyer: “Ministry of Justice hasn’t even tried to hide the real liquidation motives – they are mentioned in the suit. We are closed for representing interests in the Supreme Court and defended a persons, which is the duty of any human rights organization. We are also liquidated for participation in the independent monitoring of the Presidential election and turned the attention of Belarusian people and the international community to the numerous falsifications and violations of the Electoral legislation.”

Valiantsin Stefanovich, lawyer: “I have familiarized with the suit of the Ministry of Justice, which surprised me a lot, as the reasons for the liquidation are quite overstrained. It is not a secret that every year after the registration our organization underwent check-ups. It is not understandable why during these check-ups any violations were mentioned. If the State commission “on registration (re-registration) of public organizations” thought that there are not enough people for giving the Republican status to the organization or some signatures were forged they should have mentioned these defects and given us some time for their correction. We could have corrected it all within month’s term. It wasn’t done. The reasons for the liquidation are obvious – it is political order. The Ministry of Justice executes these orders in the cases on liquidation of a number of organizations. It simply serves the present authorities.”