Czech Republic grants asylum to Belarusian opposition candidate

Belarusian politician Ales Mikhalevich has been granted political refugee status in the Czech Republic. He was imprisoned after running against Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus’ presidential elections. He claims that he was tortured in the custody of secret police, and was stripped naked and hung by his hands. Mikhalevich was one of the seven other candidates arrested during pro-democracy protests which saw more than 700 people detained.

Belarus: Journalists arrested

Reporters Aleksandr Lomashkin and Ales Asiptsu were arrested in separate incidents on Thursday, 24 March. Both were detained on the eve of “Freedom Day”, an unofficial holiday traditionally celebrated by members of the opposition. Lomashkin is a Russian journalist who worked in Belarus and founded the human rights website Svoboda. He was forced to get off a train at the Belarusian border and was searched by two officers who claimed that they were looking for drugs. He was arrested for “insulting an officer” and imprisoned for three days. Asipstu is an independent Belarusian journalist who was also arrested for allegedly “urinating in a public place.”

 

Azerbaijani reporter kidnapped and beaten

Eminent opposition journalist Seymur Haziyev was abducted and beaten on Saturday night (26 March). He was attacked by six masked men and tortured for two hours. The contents of his laptop were scrutinised and his two telephones were taken from him. He claims that he was told to be “as intelligent and quiet as the others”. Mehman Aliyev, the head of news agency Turan, has remarked that: “When a society wakes up, the first in the firing line are the journalists”.

A wife’s appeal for dignity

The fear comes in not knowing. This is something Geng He, the wife of Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese rights lawyer who disappeared on April 10 last year, well knows.

Geng wrote a touching appeal in the New York Times today calling attention to her husband’s plight. “My husband has been tortured many times,” Geng wrote.

In 2007, officials subjected him to electric shocks, held lighted cigarettes up to his eyes and pierced his genitals with toothpicks. In 2009, the police beat him with handguns for two days. He has been tied up and forced to sit motionless for hours, threatened with death and told that our children were having nervous breakdowns.

It seems likely Gao was targeted because he took on many sensitive cases including fighting for victims of land grabs and because he wrote an open letter to the Chinese government calling them to end the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners (a banned spiritual sect).

To date, the Chinese authorities have refused to reveal where Gao is being held or even if they are detaining him.

Geng can only imagine the worst.

“I don’t know where he is, or even if he is alive,” she writes. If he has been killed, we should be allowed the dignity of laying him to rest.

Gao was awarded the the Bindmans Law and Campaigning Award last week. His wife, who fled China with their two children in 2009, accepted the prize in his place, you can watch her acceptance speech here