Law Machinery of Belarus still Ignores Political Disappearances

06.12.2004.

On 2-3 December policemen from Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania gathered in the city of Brest to discuss making the search of the missing people more effective.

According to one of the participants of the seminar, policeman Viktar Vasilewski, there are 169 missing persons in Belarus. 60% of them moved for Russia, the rest are in Poland, Lithuania and the Ukraine, as tourists or workers.

By the way, the topic of the missing activists of Belarusian opposition is not considered at the seminar. In private talks the police say there are worried about the fates of the former minister of internal affairs Yury Zakharanka, the deputy Viktar Hanchar and the businessman Anatol Krasowski, but there’s no need to discuss it in public.

The activist of Belarusian Helsinki Committee Aleh Hulak thusly commented on the situation:

-- It would be quite interesting how our specialists look in the eyes of their foreign colleagues, being responsible for the disappearances. For instance, the minister of internal affairs of Belarus Navumaw is mentioned in Pourgourides’ memorandum that was presented by relatives of the missing. How can this people say something if they don’t do their work well enough?”

We should remind that at the recent press conferences the present minister of internal affairs Navumaw said to journalists of non-state mass media that the missing opposition activists didn’t differ from more than a thousand of the missing ordinary citizens and equal attention would be paid to the search of all of them. However, five years of the official investigation gave nothing. Besides, this year the minister became persona non-grata in Europe together with many other higher officials. One of the reasons is interference with the search of the missing opposition activists.