Monitoring of the situation with human rights in regions of Belarus in January-June 2009

This monitoring is prepared on the basis of tracking the situations and the development of events in the country after the beginning of dialogue between EU and Belarus. In this document we mention negative and positive fact that took place in the regions of Belarus in the period from the 1st of January till the 1st of July 2009.
Main results:

• The situation in the whole in the regions is being tense and there are no signs of real changes
• The reduce of amount of repressions by the authorities can be explained not by the liberalization of the treatment of the opposition by the authorities but by the absence of any significant social and political events in the given period.
• The repressions are mainly of the hidden character. The most typical example is firing from job. This hidden character is explained by the fact that firing was done as if for legal reasons, but there were always political motivation in such cases. The same is the situation with employment;
• The right for meetings is always violated
• There are no steps forward in the question of freedom of associations
• The situation with mass media hasn’t changed

As the examples of positive changes we can mention the following
• There were no facts of politically motivated expulsions from educational establishments
• The number of administrative arrests and fines has reduced