On 30 August 2010, police in the western Belarusian city of Berastse (Brest) detained prominent human rights defender Mr Raman Kislyak, while his distributed leaflets to mark the International Day of the Disappeared. Raman Kislyak is a human rights lawyer.

Further Information

Raman Kislyak was arrested at approximatively 2.00pm on Savetskaya street in Berastse while distributing leaflets containing information about human rights. The Berastse city authorities had previously refused Raman Kislyak permission to distribute leaflets near the city's Lenin Square. However, he nonetheless continued with his plans. He managed to distribute about 50 leaflets before two men in plain clothes arrested him and brought him to the Leninsky police department in Berastse. Raman Kislyak was released later the same day after giving an explanation to the police about the reasons for his action.

The leaflets which Raman Kislyak distributed called on local citizens to support the idea of Belarus joining the International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances. The International Day of the Disappeared on August 30 is an annual day of commemoration held to draw attention to the fate of individuals imprisoned, often under poor conditions, or executed, unknown to their relatives and/or legal representatives.

The International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 2006 and opened for signature on 6 February 2007. As of August 2010, 83 states have signed, and nineteen have ratified. It will come into force when ratified by 20 states-parties. Belarus is one of the countries who has so far refused to sign the Convention.

This issue is particularly sensitive in Belarus, where several political opponents of President Lukashenko – Yuri Zakharenko, Victor Gonchar, Anatoly Krasovski and Dmitri Zavadski - disappeared in 1999-2000. Official investigations to date have failed to lead to any results. In 2002, a special committee for investigating disappearances in Belarus was created under the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). In 2004, PACE’s Special Rapporteur on disappearances in Belarus, Christos Pourgourides, published a report on the results of the investigations which stated, in particular, that there are substantial grounds to believe that some high-level Belarusian Governmental officials could have been involved in the disappearances of the politicians.

Front Line considers that the arrest and detention of Raman Kislyak are a direct result of his legitimate and peaceful work in the defence of human rights, and sees this as forming part of an ongoing pattern of repression of human rights activities in Belarus. The Belarusian authorities systematically deny official permission to hold peaceful demonstrations under spurious pretexts, disperse demonstrations which as a consequence are held illegally, and arrest people who take part in them.