Thursday, April 21, Deputy Head of Ukrainian youth organization "Foundation of Regional Initiatives," the Ukrainian human right activist, Mikhail Kamenev, was denied entry to Belarus. He was heading to Minsk as an information assistant manager of the International Committee of the International Observation Mission to monitor the situation of human rights in Belarus.
Mikhail Kamenev got his passport stamped with «Entry Denied» on Belarusian-Ukrainian border, but the duration of the ban was not specified.
«We believe that such actions could be interpreted as a direct obstacle to the International Observation Mission, as only be human rights activists, foreigners, can compose this mission for reasons of objectivity and impartiality, but, apparently, they have their way closed to Belarus,» said the coordinator of the Kiev Information Center Committee Marina Tsapok.
Mikhail Kamenev is the third human rights activist from Ukraine, denied entry to Belarus. Following Marina Tsapok and Maxim Kitsyuk he could not get to Minsk to continue his work of the International Observation Mission there. A citizen of Russia — Andrei Yurov, head of the International Observation Mission, was in a similar situation.
According to the report, human rights activists operated openly in the territory of Belarus, guided by the norms of the UN and the OSCE’s human rights activities, as well as monitored the human rights situation in accordance with international obligations, assumed by Belarus.
In addition, human rights activists say that it is impossible to learn about the inclusion in a «list of banned.» The cause and date of making the «lists» are not officially reported, the body, responsible for the decision is not specified either, and accordingly there is no appeal procedure.
Around 4:00 a.m. on April 20, Ukrainian human rights activist, the head of the Kiev Information Centre of the International Committee of the international observer mission, monitoring the human rights situation in Belarus, Marina Tsapok, was taken off the train Kiev — Minsk at the frontier Teryukha.
After this, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs handed over a note to the Belarusian Embassy to clarify the motivation for the Ukrainian citizen’s ban on entry to this country.
Source: Korrespondent.net
