Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-04-Speech-4-190"
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"en.20020704.9.4-190"2
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"Mr President, President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus cannot handle any criticism. The sentencing of two editors of the independent weekly
once again provides unfortunate proof of this. Their punishment – a number of years in a labour camp –is intended to silence all the critical voices in that country.
The take-over of various Belarussian literature magazines, masterminded by the Ministry of Information, serves the same purpose. Nearly all their editors-in-chief were dismissed at the same time. A number of those who replaced them immediately announced slavishly that they would no longer publish any work by journalistic critics of the apparently untouchable Belarussian Head of State.
Parallel to this, the authorities in Minsk are working towards ever tighter government control on people’s basic constitutional rights. Two recent examples illustrate this recent development. A special control committee for ‘political-social’ surveys has been set up, which is most certainly behind the publication of President Lukashenko’s painful popularity figures (just 30% in April 2002).
In addition, a revised “Law on faith and religious organisations” is threatening to drastically limit freedom of religion. This led this week to an urgent appeal by the Protestant church leaders to Lukashenko to intervene and to enter into a dialogue with them.
This is why I urge the Council, the Commission and all Member States, on the basis of paragraph 6 of the present joint motion for a resolution, to give our unqualified support to this church initiative.
Another personal comment on the motion for a resolution concerns the provision of specific support to the independent press in Belarus, which, although very much in the official firing line, could be afforded solid backup by cooperation agreements with western newspapers. I would gladly commend the plan and funding of this option to the Council, the Commission and EU Member States in order to protect the fundamental rights of the people of Belarus."@en1
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