Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections

The trial of an observer from the BPF Party, Vital Paulau, started on October 12 and ended a month later with a fine of 42 rubles, RFE/RL’s Belarus service said.

On September 22, Belarusian human rights defenders arranged a side event at the OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw to report on the results of parliamentary elections held in the country on September 11.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Belarus, Miklós Haraszti, says despite the admission of a token oppositionist there was no real difference between last Sunday’s parliamentary elections and all the previous ones carried out in Belarus.

The European Union has said that parliamentary elections in Belarus on September 11 show the need for "comprehensive electoral reform."

The campaign Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections summed up yesterday the results of monitoring the elections of deputies of the House of Representatives of the 6th convocation. At a press conference in Minsk, the campaign coordinators Aleh Hulak (Belarusian Helsinki Committee) and Uladzimir Labkovich (Human Rights Center "Viasna") presented their assessment of the parliamentary election campaign.

The 11 September parliamentary elections were efficiently organized and there were visible efforts to address some long-standing issues, but a number of systemic shortcomings remain, the international observers of the OSCE ODIHR mission concluded in a preliminary statement released today.

The elections did not meet a number of key international standards for democratic and free elections, as well as the country’s electoral legislation. First of all, the findings are due to the lack of equal access to state media for all candidates, lack of impartiality of election commissions, facts of abuse of administrative resources in favor of the pro-government candidates, numerous facts of forcing voters to participate in early voting, non-transparency of some election procedures for observers.

Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections announce a press conference on September 12 on the results of monitoring the elections to the House of Representatives of the National Assembly of the sixth convocation.

The candidates were not provided with equal rights; pro-government candidates enjoyed better conditions for campaigning: they made extensive use of the administrative resources, including electronic and print media.

Early voting remains one of the systemic problems of the country’s electoral process and creates opportunities for the use of administrative resources and other manipulations.

364 short-term observers of the campaign "Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections" are involved in daily observation of the early voting at 182 polling stations across the country.

In accordance with the Electoral Code, early voting opened on September 6.

A group of human rights defenders and students' rights activists have launched an online petition to protest against the forcing of Belarusian students to vote early in this year’s parliamentary elections.

In accordance with the Electoral Code, early voting opened on September 6.

Year after year, state-owned enterprises and institutions have helped provided human resources to form the election commissions, ‘cooperative’ observers and loyal candidates. The tradition rests upon the country’s legislation, which defines a company’s staff (‘labor collective’) as a key actor of the electoral process, a fact opposed by many independent experts as an anachronism of the Soviet past.