{"id":20258,"date":"2011-02-17T10:49:51","date_gmt":"2011-02-17T10:49:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=20258"},"modified":"2012-04-25T17:21:26","modified_gmt":"2012-04-25T16:21:26","slug":"19-february-protest-in-solidarity-with-belarus-prisoners-of-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=20258","title":{"rendered":"PAST EVENT: 19 February: Protest in solidarity with Belarus prisoners of conscience"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This <strong>Saturday, 19 February at 2pm<\/strong>, there will be a protest organised by the <strong>Belarus Committee<\/strong> outside the Belarusian Embassy, 6 Kensington Court, London (you can see it on a map <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?f=q&amp;source=s_q&amp;hl=en&amp;q=Embassy+Of+Belarus&amp;aq=&amp;sll=39.504041,-25.224609&amp;sspn=53.469466,79.013672&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;rq=1&amp;ev=p&amp;split=1&amp;filter=0&amp;hq=belarusian+embassy+london&amp;hnear=&amp;cid=5456998684540777272&amp;ll=51.12766,0.65918&amp;spn=2.758095,4.938354&amp;z=8&amp;iwloc=A\">here<\/a>). The protest is to raise awareness of the prisoners of conscience detained by President Lukashenko since the rigged election in December.<\/p>\n<p>Many of those detained have little access to justice and there are serious reports of ill-treatment. Of those detained many are close friends and associates of the Belarus Free Theatre. Please join us to send a clear signal to the Belarusian authorities that the world is watching.<\/p>\n<p>The Belarus Committee is a group of NGOs including Index on Censorship, English PEN, PEN International, Amnesty, Article 19, human rights firm H20 Lawand individuals including <strong>Sir Tom Stoppard<\/strong>, with patrons <strong>Mikhail Gorbachev<\/strong> and <strong>Vaclav Havel<\/strong>, established in solidarity with all the victims of President Lukashenko\u2019s regime, especially the prisoners currently detained by the secret police.\u00a0The <strong>first trial <\/strong>of the prisoners<strong> begins on 17 February.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Belarus is Europe\u2019s last dictatorship. The Presidential elections last December were described by the OSCE as \u201cseriously flawed\u201d, with the count in half of the polling districts \u201cbad or very bad\u201d. During an post-election rally in Independence Square in Minsk the authorities arrested members of the country\u2019s political opposition and civil society activists. Over 600 people were arrested that evening including Natalia Koliada from the Belarus Free Theatre and Index on Censorship award nominee Natalia Radzina. Currently, 33 prisoners are still kept in custody, and journalist Irina Khalip &#8212; the wife of presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov &#8212; and presidential candidate Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu are both under punitive house arrest. They face up to 15 years in prison for orchestrating \u201cmass disorder\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, contact Michael Harris<\/p>\n<p>Mike@indexoncensorship.org<\/p>\n<p>+44 (0) 7974 838 468<\/p>\n<p>Heather McGill<\/p>\n<p>HMcHill@amnesty.org<\/p>\n<p>+44 (0) 77 \u00a0960 5261<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.zoneofsilence.org\">www.zoneofsilence.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>19 February: Protest in solidarity with Belarus prisoners of conscience<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[7379],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20258"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20258"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35666,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20258\/revisions\/35666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}