Miklós Haraszti made his report on the situation with human rights in Belarus at the 69th session of the UN General Assembly on October 28.
Haraszti ‘has been watching the human rights situation in Belarus since his appointment UN Special Rapporteur in 2012’, he said. The situation has not changed much this year, he claimed.
The amendments to the law on political associations and parties adopted in February 2014 are a positive tendency, the UN Special Rapporteur noted. He also mentioned the amnesty of well-known human rights defender Ales Bialiatski , BelaPAN reports.
However, three factors paralyze the activity of the civil society: the necessity to ask for permission to register associations, mass refusals resulting from it and criminal responsibility for acting on behalf of an unregistered organization and its financing.
Haraszti has not managed to visit Belarus so far. He is hoping that the Belarusian authorities will agree to cooperate with the Special Rapporteur and invite him to visit the country.
The reports on Belarus are dictated by Brussels, the Belarusian representative claimed in response. He considered the Special Rapporteur’s report as an attempt to interfere in our state’s internal affairs. In particular, the UN Special Rapporteur used foreign sources for his report and considered Belarusian sources to be inveracious, he claimed.
