Belarusian Civil Society Forum Urges To Unblock Charter'97

A conference with the participation of the head of the European Union representation in Belarus was held in Minsk.

The conference of the Belarusian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum "Civil Society of Belarus as a Stakeholder of Belarusian-European Relations: Towards Practical Results of 2020" was held in Minsk, the website of the BAJ informs.

During the conference, the role, content and form of participation of the civil society in various formats and communication platforms of the Belarusian-European relations, their possible efforts aimed at solving the practical tasks of the Eastern Partnership were discussed.

Head of public association "BAJ" Andrei Bastunets, in particular, touched upon the sphere of media, freedom of speech. The chairman of the professional organization noted that the issue of freedom of speech is seriously discussed in the framework of the Civil Society Forum, several joint projects related to the media were implemented, the last of them concerned the Russian propaganda. Also in 2013-2014, the Media Freedom Index was made in the Eastern Partnership countries. The rating measures politics, media legislation, the development of television, the Internet, law enforcement. Belarus was a stable country during those two years: each time it was on the last place.

"I know that in Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova the dialogue with representatives of civil society was conducted in order to change something. In Belarus and Azerbaijan, nothing like this happened. It all looked like two parallel processes. Perhaps, of course, the situation was influenced by the fact that the Belarusian parliament was not represented in the Civil Society Forum. But I do not think that the situation would have changed if there had been members of the Belarusian parliament. Our parliamentarians are included in the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, but this leads to no serious changes. Unfortunately, there are parallel processes: the discussion of the human rights situation among the country's civil society and the state process aimed primarily at concealing problems," - Bastunets said in his speech at the conference of the Belarusian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum.

As an example of negotiations without result, Bastunets mentioned a dialogue on human rights, where the detentions of journalists, and fines for work without accreditation were also discussed. There was a period when it seemed that these conversations brought fruit: from April 2016 to March 2017 journalists were not fined for contributing to foreign media without accreditation. But since March 2017, the situation has deteriorated significantly, and over the past year the number of such fines has exceeded their total for the previous three years.

"This shows that if the issue is on the agenda of various negotiations and dialogues, this does not affect its solving in practice. It often happens that the dialogue is conducted by some representatives of state bodies, and decisions are made by other people and institutions.

How can you influence this? This is one of the political issues for the Belarusian state. I must admit that the expansion of the range of topics that are currently being considered between the EU and Belarus at different venues is due to the fact that the authorities are ready to talk about many things, but want to push back in the corner the human rights issues, those issues that are sensitive for us. And even from European officials we sometimes hear: "Let's talk with the Belarusian state on the issues on which it is ready. The rest will be borne in mind. " But this is a very serious problem for our human rights community! ", - stressed the head of the Belarusian Association of Journalists.

Head of the European Union Delegation to Belarus Andrea Victorin said that representatives of the Belarusian civil society need to prepare for each round of negotiations and raise their own questions there, but not to wait for quick decisions.

"Of course, you will not receive information in three months, as you might like. It doesn't happen so with regard to other countries. But you can be sure that sometime in April this year there will be a meeting of the coordination group, in June - the next round of the dialogue on human rights. You can already start to prepare. The pragmatic nature of the dialogue is not necessarily something negative. If we want to see progress, we must talk about everything that partners are ready to talk about. And not just react, for example, to violations during the election by what statements. We need to talk and negotiate to achieve the result, " - Andrea Victorin said.

The diplomat also stressed that Belarus is the only country from the Eastern Partnership, in the dialogue with which human rights representatives of the civil, human rights community are present. And they have the ability to control the process.

"In other countries, there is no such thing. They are simply consulted, but they are not participants in the discussion. I completely agree with you that the cosmetic changes are not enough. But we must also learn to participate in these formats of cooperation, " - head of the Delegation of the European Union in Belarus Andrea Victorin noted.

Following the meeting, a final resolution was adopted. The document also focuses attention on problems in the media sector of Belarus.

"We declare that the facts of regular pressure on independent media and journalists are unacceptable. We support the assessments of the situation with freedom of speech in our country, presented in the latest statements of the Belarusian Association of Journalists and a group of human rights organizations about the inadmissibility of restricting citizens' access to the websites "Belarusian Partisan" (belaruspartisan.org) and "Charter'97" (Сharter97.org) and we call for the cancellation of the relevant decisions by the Ministry of Information and restore free access to these websites. We also call for a review of existing legislation on the media and stop the practice of political censorship on the Internet, as well as harassment of journalists for their professional activities," - the participants of the conference of the Belarusian National Platform of the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum.