Valery Dranchuk accuses court of violating the Convention on Child’s Rights

11.08.2006.

Source: www.charter97.org

The well-known journalist and ecologist Valery Dranchuk, the father of the Partnership activist Tsimafei Dranchuk, draws attention of the public that by ruling to imprison human rights activists, the court of Tsentralny borough of Minsk disregarded blatant violations of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, though Belarus is its member state. ˜Tsimafei has a son, whom he first saw during announcement of the verdict. Platon is to turn 4 months soon, he is growing, he imbibes emotions, and he must feel his father from the first days of his life. It is humanly understandable! However this aspect had been completely ignored by the investigators, the regime’s officials and the prosecutor’s office of Belarus, which I had applied to change the measure of restraint to child’s benefit,’ Valery Dranchuk said in an interview to the Charter’97 press center.

’I would not enumerate the articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. All of them are filled with the spirit of concern over a child’s well-being. From the point of view of the convention, the verdict is not only pitiless, but wild. It’s a manifestation of sadism. We remember who had been tormenting children in our country, who had been taking them from their parents, threw them into wells, fired point-blank at them. Our time is getting more and more comparable to the years of Nazi occupation. And I realise what my associations mean. Sooner or later, this regime is to be covered with shame and the verdict by Mihun and Iasinovich as well. The verdict concerns not only Tsimafei, but Mikola Astreika, who has been sentenced to two years away from his pregnant wife,’ Valery Dranchuk notes.

The journalist hopes that the UN mission in Belarus and personally Ms. Cihan Sultanoglu would turn attention to this situation, and using their mandate would state their view on verdicts to Partnership activists.