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official warning to opposition Central Election Commission Deputy Chairman Iosif Naumchik that his political activities could result in charges of conspiracy to seize state power under article 61-1 of the |
criminal code, punishable by 8 to 12 years in prison. Similar warnings were issued to opposition Central Election Commission members Lidiya Sazonovets and Sergei Obodovsky in February. On February 25, |
government security officials raided a meeting of the opposition Central Election Commission in Minsk and arrested its 15 members. Commission chairman Viktor Gonchar subsequently was sentenced to 10 days in |
prison for organizing an "unsanctioned rally" (see Section 1.d.). He remained under investigation on charges of illegally claiming a public office until he disappeared in September (See section 1.b.) Other |
commission members were sentenced to 5 days in prison, fined between about $40 (10 million rubles) and about $60 (15 million rubles), or given official warnings. On March 12, the |
Ministry of Justice issued a public statement calling on citizens "not to give in to provocations on the part of irresponsible politicians." Further official warnings from the KGB later were |
given to a number of opposition activists including Central Election Commission member Nikolai Pokhabov and BNF member Tatyana Leschinskaya. A number of opposition election initiative workers complained that either they |
or their family members were threatened by intimations that they could be fired from their jobs because of their political activities. Government security officials frequently confiscated ballot forms to be |
used in the opposition election initiative. On June 23 the 13th Supreme Soviet sought to hold a meeting in a Minsk Restaurant, but the members were driven out by a |
special-purpose police detachment that claimed that a bomb had been planted in the restaurant. The chairman, Seymon Sharetsky, told a reporter that the bomb story had been planned much earlier. |
The session continued on the street near the restaurant and adopted an appeal to Lukashenko for political dialog. On July 22, following a meeting the previous day of the 13th |
Supreme Soviet (Supsov) in Minsk held to mark the end of Lukashenko's legal 5-year term in office, Supsov chairman Semyon Sharetsky sought temporary refuge in Lithuania due to his fear |
that he might be arrested. As of year's end, Sharetsky remained in Lithuania. The Government continued to attempt to limit severely the activities of NGO's (see Section 4). c. Freedom |
of Religion The Constitution provides for freedom of religion; however, the Government restricts this right in practice. The Government enforces a 1995 Cabinet of Ministers decree that controls religious workers, |
in an attempt to protect orthodoxy and prevent the growth of evangelical religions. Foreigners generally are prohibited from preaching or heading churches, at least with respect to what the Government |
views as "nontraditional" religions, which include Protestant faiths. A 1997 directive by the Council of Ministers prohibits teaching religion at youth camps. Further restrictive regulations governing the activities of foreign |
religious workers and clergy were passed by the Council of Ministers in February, although it remains unclear at year's end to what extent they were being enforced. The Government's State |
Committee on Religious and National Affairs (SCRNA), which was established in January 1997, appears to categorize religions and denominations. Some are viewed as "traditional," including Russian Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Judaism, |
and Islam (as practiced by a small community of ethnic Tatars with roots in the country dating back to the 11th century); some are viewed as "nontraditional," including some Protestant |
and other faiths; and some are viewed as "sects," including Eastern religions and other faiths. The authorities deny permission to register legally at the national level to some faiths considered |
to be nontraditional, and to all considered to be sects. Without legal registration, it is extremely difficult to rent or purchase property in order to hold religious services. While all |
registered religious organizations enjoy tax-exempt status, any government subsidies appear limited principally to the Orthodox Church. Citizens are not prohibited from proselytizing, but foreign missionaries may not engage in religious |
activities outside the institutions that invited them. Only religious organizations already registered in the country may invite foreign clergy. Foreign religious workers who do not register with the authorities, or |
who fail to get approval for religious activities – often a difficult bureaucratic process – have been expelled from the country. The Government and the President encourage a greater role |
for the Orthodox Church. However, the effort has not slowed the growth of Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church has experienced difficulty getting permission from authorities to |
bring in a sufficient number of outside religious workers to make up for a shortage of native clergy. According to an independent Russian press report, President Lukashenko told Russian Orthodox |
Church Patriarch Aleksey II, during a visit by the Patriarch to Minsk in September 1998, that Christian values should become "the state ideology of Belarus." During a press conference held |
in Minsk in late 1998, Vyacheslav Savitskiy, an official of the State Committee on Religious and Ethnic Affairs, emphasized the existence of "destructive sects" in the country. According to Savitskiy, |
the Government had denied registration requests of 11 such "sects." For example, the authorities consistently have denied the repeated registration attempts of the Belarus Orthodox Autocephalous Church. On November 7, |
Belarusian Autocephalous Orthodox Church priest Yan Spasyuk announced a hunger strike to protest the continued unwillingness of local authorities in Grodno to register his parish, as well as a recent |
police raid on his house while he was conducting a prayer service. On November 28, at the urging of his family and parishioners, Spasyuk called off the hunger strike. During |
a religious conference held in Minsk on April 22, Belarusian Orthodox Church Patriarchal Exarch Filaret stated that the Orthodox Church does not seek the role of interconfessional leader or to |
become a state-run church. However, he stressed, the Orthodox Church would cooperate only with religious faiths that have "historical roots" in the country. Filaret also remarked that he was against |
the "invasion of those foreign religions that corrupt souls." The President granted the Orthodox Church special financial advantages, which other denominations do not enjoy, and has declared the preservation and |
development of Orthodox Christianity a "moral necessity." Bishops must receive permission from the State Committee on Religious Affairs before transferring a foreign priest to another parish. According to the Anti-Defamation |
League and the World Jewish Congress, in March 1998 material from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was included in a government-controlled religious broadcast. In spite of protests from |
the Jewish community, the program was rebroadcast in May and again in July. In a television interview given in Moscow in December 1998, President Lukashenko remarked that "the main anti-Semites |
in Russia are representatives of the Jewish population" (see Section 5.). However, government authorities in general appear to try to maintain good relations with leaders of the Jewish community. Following |
an arson attack on April 11, 1999 at the main synagogue in Minsk (see Section 5), police reportedly responded quickly. On April 16, the SCRNA agreed to a four-point plan |
with the head of the Union of Jewish Religious Organizations of Belarus to combat anti-Semitism. It remains unclear to what extent SCRNA may implement this plan. Restitution of religious property |
remained limited during the year. A key obstacle is the lack of a legal basis for restitution of property that was seized during the Soviet era and the Nazi occupation. |
The few returns of property to religious communities have been on an individual and inconsistent basis, and local government authorities in general are reluctant to cooperate on the issue without |
some form of compensation to replace properties that sometimes have become important public facilities. Over the past several years, the Jewish community has lobbied the Government successfully to return three |
synagogues in Minsk and several buildings outside the capital. In August 1998, following extensive restoration, the Catholic community reconsecrated a church in Pruzhany that had been shut down by Soviet |
authorities following World War II. The consecration ceremony was lead by the church's former priest who had spent 10 years in Siberia during the Soviet period. d. Freedom of Movement |
Within the Country, Foreign Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation According to the Constitution, citizens are free to travel within the country and to live and work where they wish; however, the |
Government restricts these rights in practice. All adults are issued internal passports, which serve as primary identity documents and are required for travel, permanent housing, and hotel registration. On June |
1, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional an article of the Administrative Code barring enterprises, establishments, and organizations from employing persons without a "propiska" (pass), or the compulsory registration of their |
residence address. Under Article 182 of the Administrative Code, employers faced fines for giving jobs to persons who had no stamp in their passport indicating that their residence and their |
new place of employment were located in the same city or district. However, it remains unclear to what extent this court decision actually has affected local security officials. In practice |
the right to choose one's residence appears to remain restricted. On November 29, the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced a three-stage program to replace the "propiska" system in the period |
2000-05; however, there were no reports of any action to implement the program at year's end. Government regulations on entry and exit require citizens who wish to travel abroad to |
receive first a "global" exit visa in their passport, valid for between 1 and 5 years. Once the traveler has these documents, the law does not restrict travel. Following the |
dissolution of the Supreme Soviet in 1996, the Government took measures aimed at limiting the travel of opposition politicians who refused to submit to the legislature created by the November |
1996 referendum. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced in December 1996 that those Parliamentarians who did not join the new legislature could no longer travel on their diplomatic passports, despite |
the fact that these individuals had been assured that they would retain their status as deputies until their terms of office expired. Although their diplomatic passports were not confiscated, the |
border guards reportedly had a blacklist of opposition members who were to be denied exit from the country if they used a diplomatic passport. Subsequent to the January 1997 refusal |
by border guards to allow former Supreme Soviet Chairman Stanislav Shushkevich and parliamentary deputy Anatoliy Lebedko to travel abroad on their diplomatic passports, a number of members of the former |
Supreme Soviet have either acquired regular passports and have been allowed to travel abroad, or have departed from Russia using their Belarusian diplomatic passports. Government authorities canceled the "global" exit |
visas in the regular passports of 13th Supreme Soviet deputies Pavel Znavets and Viktor Gonchar in July and August respectively, based on ongoing investigations related to their political activities (see |
Sections 1.d. and 2.b.). Citing pending charges against him related to his participation in antigovernment demonstrations in Minsk in July and October (see Section 1.d.), and despite an invitation from |
the OSCE, government authorities denied permission to Belarusian Social Democratic Party leader Mikalay Statkevich to travel with an opposition delegation to the OSCE summit held in Istanbul in November. According |
to official data, the State did not deny any citizen permission to emigrate. However, legislation restricting emigration by those with access to "state secrets" remained in effect, and any citizen |
involved in a criminal investigation also was ineligible to emigrate. Prospective emigrants who have been refused the right to emigrate may appeal to the courts. The Constitution gives aliens and |
stateless persons the same rights as citizens, except in cases established by law, international agreement, or the Constitution. The Constitution also allows the State to grant refugee status to persons |
who were being persecuted in other states for their political and religious convictions, or because of nationality. The Government does not have a law on first asylum, nor has it |
signed readmission agreements with any of its neighboring states. The Government cooperates with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations in assisting refugees. In May 1997, |
the Government implemented for the first time the 1995 Law on Refugees, granting refugee status to a group of Afghans. As of October, the Government had granted official refugee status |
to 248 persons (including 185 from Afghanistan, 31 from Georgia, 18 from Ethiopia, and 11 from Tajikistan) many of whom have lived in the country prior to the collapse of |
the Soviet Union. Since its formation in early 1997 from the State Migration Service, the Committee on Migration within the Ministry of Labor has turned down 17 applications for refugee |
status. On July 17, the chairman of the Migration Committee announced that there were between 100,000 and 150,000 illegal migrants in the country. As of early in the year, 2,700 |
potential asylum seekers had registered with the UNHCR in Belarus. Some refugees continue to report difficulty registering with local authorities, and continued delay in establishing a comprehensive asylum policy and |
refugee policy has made the lives of these individuals difficult. The UNHCR had no reports of any case of bona fide refugees being forced to return countries in which they |
feared persecution. Section 3. Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government The Government severely limits the right of citizens to change their government. In November |
1996, the executive branch conducted a controversial constitutional referendum that was neither free nor fair, according to credible international observers, including representatives of the European Union and the OSCE. Many |
Members of Parliament and of the Constitutional Court actively opposed President Lukashenko's proposals for both substantive and procedural reasons. The justices asserted that the referendum gave Lukashenko control over the |
legislative and judicial branches of government and extended his term in office. They also criticized it on procedural grounds as an unconstitutional means to eliminate the Constitution's checks and balances |
and grant the President virtually unlimited powers. In the period leading up to the referendum, opponents of President Lukashenko's proposals were denied access to the media, election officials failed to |
record the names of early voters, and no texts of the proposed Constitution were made available to voters until several days after citizens began voting. As a result of these |
irregularities, the head of the Central Election Commission (CEC) announced prior to the event that he would not be able to certify the results of the referendum. President Lukashenko promptly |
fired him, although the Constitution in force at the time gave the Parliament the exclusive authority to appoint and dismiss the CEC Chairman. Members of the security forces forcibly removed |
the head of the CEC from his office. Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Mikhail Chigir resigned in protest of President Lukashenko's refusal to cancel the widely criticized referendum. Most members of |
the international community chose not to send election monitors to observe the referendum because of the illegitimacy of the entire process. Human rights organizations, including the Lawyers Committee for Human |
Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Human Rights Watch, protested the conduct of the referendum. The Constitutional Court formally ruled that the issues posed in President Lukashenko's referendum could |
not be decided legally through a referendum, and that its results should be purely advisory, consistent with the Constitution. However, after winning the referendum – according to the Government's own |
official count – President Lukashenko began to implement it immediately. The new Constitution established a bicameral legislature. Its 110-member lower house was formed out of the membership of the existing |
Supreme Soviet; deputies volunteered or were lured by promises of free housing and other benefits to serve in the body. The 64-member upper house was created by a combination of |
presidential appointments and elections by the 6 regional or oblast councils and the Minsk City Council. The transition left 86 electoral districts unrepresented because the new Constitution reduced the number |
of representatives, and also because a full Supreme Soviet had never been seated, largely due to the executive branch's intervention in the 1995 elections. Despite consultative assistance provided by the |
OSCE's AMG, President Lukashenko's National Assembly passed in December 1998 seriously flawed legislation on local elections, which were held on April 4 and 18. A late modification to Article 33 |
of the law, inserted at the insistence of the President, effectively bars many opposition candidates from running in local elections by prohibiting the participation of individuals who have been fined |
administratively by government authorities. The OSCE issued an official statement that the provisions of the law did not provide for a free and fair election process. Consequently, the OSCE did |
not organize an election observation program. On August 31, amendments to the referendum law came into force, which the OSCE declared were not in accordance with international standards. The amended |
law provides that referendums may be initiated by the President, the President's National Assembly, or 450,000 signatures – including a minimum of 30,000 in the city of Minsk and in |
each of the country's 6 oblasts. The law makes 10 percent of all signatures subject to verification, and all signatures may be invalidated if the commission finds just 1 percent |
(4500 signatures) to be faulty. It also gave the President the prerogative to decide on the validity of referendum results. In late January, an opposition coalition "congress of democratic forces" |
undertook to arrange for alternative presidential elections to be held from May 6 to May 16 in order to draw attention to the end of President Lukashenko's legal 5-year term |
in office in July. In response, authorities initiated a widespread crackdown on opposition political activities throughout the country. Procurator General Oleg Bozhelko warned in a public statement on February 8 |
that participation in the opposition initiative could result in prosecution for attempting to "seize power unconstitutionally and destabilizing society." A number of opposition election initiative workers complained that either they |
or their family members were threatened by intimations that they could be fired from their jobs because of their political activities. Government security officials frequently confiscated ballot forms to be |
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