Volha Smalianka: I don’t want to think that the official Europe will evade situation with Tonkacheva

The silence of the Belarusan authorities is easily understood; but absence of reaction of the official European structures is surprising.

At first the reaction in the society and the independent media on the decision to deport Elena Tonkacheva, the head of the Legal Transformation Center “Lawtrend, was quite loud.

With time the level of informative activity has declined, though the situation didn’t lose its actuality for Belarusans.

Belarusan society doesn’t treat Tonkacheva’s situation indifferently, told Volha Smalianka, Elena’s colleague, the head of the Centre for Legal Transformation “Lawtrend” to EuroBelarus Information Service.

- We receive quite a few letters and appeals of support. And now the level of support even seems to have increased. A lot of letters are coming from the organizations we are working with. They claim to be sending letters to the head of the Municipal Department of Internal Affairs of the Minsk City Executive Committee and to the head of Department of Migration and Citizenship. In these letters they write why it is particularly important for them that Tonkacheva stays in the country.

During the last day there were at least 20 such appeals that we know about.

It is important for people that Elena Tonkacheva has been working with them for a long time.

- Apart from Belarusan civil society, you must have expected the reaction from the European civil society, mustn’t you?

- We see the reaction of our international partners – human rights organizations of Sweden, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine. It is human rights organizations that support us and ask their governments to assist in deciding this question, as well as to exert certain pressure in its solution. They also appeal to different international structures.

- But still, the official structures in the West are silent. Why?

- This is a painful question for us at the moment. As to the institutes and structures of the European Union and the Council of Europe, unfortunately, we haven’t heard any special reaction from them yet.

It is hard to say why it hasn’t followed yet. It would be sad to realize that this is their conscious stance, that they renounce Tonkacheva’s situation, or they prefer to ignore Belarusan situation, where pressure on human rights organizations is exerted and situation isn’t getting any better.

But we still hope that the reaction will follow. We don’t want to think that the EU will shut its eyes on this situation.

- What do you think: is it possible that the reaction on the decision of the authorities influences the appeal of the decision of the Municipal Department of Internal Affairs?

- I am very emotional about this case. As a person who has been working with Elena for many years, it is very important for me that the reaction of the citizens influences the authorities. I can’t certainly say that it won’t influence the decision; if we didn’t believe that it would, we wouldn’t do all that.

On the one hand, we have a fact that the authorities have already ignored appeals of more than 7 thousand people made in the beginning of the case’s consideration. This is very sad when the authorities ignore the appeals of their own citizens.

But on the other hand, the number of appeals demonstrates the consolidation of the civil society. At least we can say that we have civil society; it is our touchstone.

- But few people believe that the appeals of citizens might influence the decision of the authorities.

- I still think that we should continue appealing to the state bodies and do at least something. I have faced the position of staying away from doing anything as the authorities have already made their decision.

But if we don’t do anything, the situation in Belarus won’t change even more so.