22/11/2013 | Standing Committee
"Following the events after the presidential election in Belarus in 2010, the Nordic Council has suspended contact with the regime," said Marit Nybakk, President of the Nordic Council, addressing the Standing Committee in Vienna today.
10/10/2013 | President
"The number of executions remains high in the United States and has even increased in Japan in 2012 whilst, at global level, more and more states are in the process of abolishing the death penalty”, PACE President said.
03/10/2013 | Political Affairs and Democracy
Any opening of dialogue between the Assembly and the Belarusian authorities should remain conditional on the release of political prisoners and on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, PACE committee says.
13/06/2013 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Marina Schuster (Germany, ALDE), PACE General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty, and Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), Rapporteur on the situation in Belarus, have expressed deep concern at press reports according to which another death sentence was handed down in Belarus yesterday.
03/05/2013 | Legal Affairs and Human Rights
Marina Schuster (Germany, ALDE), PACE's newly-appointed General Rapporteur on the abolition of the death penalty, and Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), rapporteur on the situation in Belarus, have expressed their dismay at the first death sentence handed down in Belarus since the execution of the purported Minsk metro bombers in 2012.
21/11/2012 | Political Affairs and Democracy
Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), PACE rapporteur on Belarus, has expressed his dismay that the “Viasna” human rights centre in Minsk has been ordered to vacate its office by 27 November, following a year of obscure legal procedures which transferred ownership of the apartment in which the office is located to the state.
11/10/2012 | Culture, Science, Education and Media
PACE’s Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media, in a wide-ranging assessment of the state of media freedom in Europe, has demanded that Council of Europe member States properly investigate and hold liable the instigators of attacks on investigative journalists and those working with them.
04/10/2012 | Session
In a statement adopted today in Strasbourg, the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) announced its unanimous decision to support the proposal by Andres Herkel (Estonia, EPP/CD), rapporteur on the situation in Belarus, to nominate Ales Bialiatski – the human rights defender sentenced on 24 November 2011 to four and a half years’ imprisonment – for the 2013 PACE Human Rights Prize.
24/09/2012 | Political Affairs and Democracy
"I regret that many OSCE commitments on citizens’ democratic rights to associate, to stand as candidates and to express themselves freely were not respected in yesterday’s parliamentary elections in Belarus and that the elections were not administered in an impartial manner due to the lack of proper counting procedures or ways for observers to verify the results, " said Andres Herkel.
26/06/2012 | Session
PACE Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy meeting in Strasbourg, today made the following statement: “With a view to the forthcoming parliamentary elections on 23 September 2012 in Belarus, the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy urges the Belarusian authorities to open up political space and to meet their commitments to the OSCE in terms of standards for free and fair elections, electoral reforms, media freedom and respect for human rights.
16/04/2012 | President
PACE President Jean-Claude Mignon today welcomed the release of Belarusian opposition leader Andrei Sannikov and his former campaign aide Dzmitry Bandarenka, while urging President Lukashenko “to release and fully rehabilitate all other remaining political prisoners”. “At its January 2012 Session, our Assembly deplored that a number of individuals, including former presidential candidates, civil society activists and prominent human rights defenders, remain in prison on political grounds”, the President said.
18/03/2012 | President
PACE President Jean-Claude Mignon has said he is appalled by the executions of Vladislav Kovalev and Dmitry Konovalov in Belarus, confirmed by several different sources today. “An irreparable act has been committed. The Belarusian authorities have once again remained deaf to the many calls of the international community for clemency..."