Human rights activists start monitoring elections to local councils of deputies

The Belarusian Helsinki Committee and an unregistered human rights centre “Vyasna” have announced the beginning of a monitoring campaign of elections to local councils of deputies. A human rights activist Ales Byalyatski has informed ERB that they have been monitoring elections for 10 years already. The coming elections interested them because of the changes made in the election legislation. Ales Byalyatski: “We would like to see how the changes can influence all the stages of the election process. We will monitor more than 20 Belarusian regions where more than half of electors live. The analysis of the situation performed in the regions will objectively depict the election campaign and the scale of its tension, transparency and democracy”.

According to him, the BHC and “Vyasna” will send about 300 observers to election areas. Until then, they will collect information from candidates’ observers.

According to Ales Byalyatski, human rights organizations’ observers will not send the information about possible violations to court on their own. However, he says they will encourage candidates’ observers to do it.