Elena Tonkacheva: Too few human rights advocates to stand in the way of critical situations

2013 is over, but the problems Belarusan human rights community faces remain the same.

Elena Tonkacheva, the head of the Legal Transformation Centre “Lawtrend”, in the interview with the “EuroBelarus” Information Service summed up the results of the year.

The main result is that 2013 has undoubtedly left us with a number of problems. First of all, these are Belarusan political prisoners, among whom is Ales Bialiatski. Secondly, we should note that this year was full of different challenges: situation in Syria, the plight of the refugees in Lebanon, arrest of the “Greenpeace” vessel, problems with the Eastern Partnership program and the Dialog on Modernization program, continuation of “Bolotnaya Square” case in Russia and, of course, Maidan in Ukraine.

- What about Belarus?

- We can hardly say that Belarusan situation was full on events noticeable at the international arena… However, we should mention the Third Human Rights Forum that took place on October 26-27 in Vilnius, rather successful communication of Belarusan human rights organizations with Miklos Haraszti, special reporter of the United Nations Human Rights Council to Belarus, and quite clear and consolidated voice of the human rights organizations on developing criteria of “political prisoners” or “the prisoner of conscience”. I believe that the development of these criteria has become an important step undertaken by an international expert group, which will allow us in future to talk with politicians, who try to use the problem of political prisoners in their political goals.

And it is this year that I realized that Belarus doesn’t have enough human rights fighters and quite poor organization to be a serious hindrance to the formation of centres of massive human rights violations. Perhaps, in comparison with some other civilian sectors we look like the most consolidated group, but still it is too little to become impedance to some critical conflict. We can cope with the consequences, but still cannot avert them. I think we should work on that in the nearest future.