Belarusian Freedom Day: violation of human rights and freedoms again

            On the 25th of March Belarusians celebrate the day of the creation of Belarusian People’s Republic (Dzien Voli) in 1918. For many years of Lukashenko’s regime Belarusians were protesting peacefully to commemorate this important day in the history. This year the social protests against the tax for unemployed occurred before Dzien Voli. Those protests were crowded and occurred mainly in the regions where the unemployment rate has been dramatically increasing. Authorities got scared that it could be a massive gathering of people in the capital, therefore it performed the preventive arrests of leaders of opposition, journalists and activists. More than 300 people were detained before March 25: police entered their homes taking away people and confiscating their belongings. Much more people were arrested on March 25. All together there have been more than 1000 people detained. People were caught on the way to the protest, pushed to the  vehicles and taken away, beaten up. 

             If the social protesters merged with political protesters, it would be hard to stop such quantity of people. And the authorities know that.

(c) Radio Svaboda

Magnitsky: tragedy of whistleblower in Russia

    Seven years ago a Russian citizen, Sergei Magnitsky, died being imprisoned in Moscow jail without a trial. Magnitsky was an auditor specialized on civil law investigating the case of Hermitage Capital Management that has been indicted of tax evasion. During the investigation he detected the involvement of police, tax officials and Russian mafia in the big corrupt scheme. Magnitsky was accused of covering a fraud committed by Hermitage. The tragedy reveals the dramatic level of corruption spreaded in the entire Russian system starting from police and judiciary and ending in organized crime. Today citizens of Russia state that corruption is the third biggest problem in Russia besides economy and health care. Nevertheless, the corruption is the problem number one that causes all other problems.