In coming months authorities to answer for Krasouski’s disappearance

• 2.09.2009, 10:00

The UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances has offered Belarus a deadline for preparing an answer to the suit of the family of disappeared Anatol Krasouski.

The suit was filed to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances on November 16, 2008, and the date for answer was initially set for May 16, 2009. However, the mission of Belarus to the UN demanded to offer a copy of the suit and additional documents in Russian (the original is in English), and the term was cancelled, Radio Svaboda informs.

The suit of Krasouski’s family consists of 100 and has a supplement of 26 documents with more than one thousand pages.

We remind that in 1999–2000, Viktar Hanchar, first vice speaker of the 13th Supreme Council of Belarus and head of the Central Electoral Commission; businessman and public figure Anatol Krasouski; former interior minister and opposition politician Yury Zakharanka; ORT TV channel camera operator Zmitser Zavadski disappeared in Belarus. Nothing is known about the fate of these people.

The international community calls to find out further fate of the disappeared Belarusian oppositionists. Resolutions of UN Human Rights Commission, Parliamentary Assemblies of the Council of Europe and the OSCE urge to reveal the truth about the disappearances.

A number of Belarusian high-ranking officials, in particular minister of internal affaires Uladzimir Navumau, head of the president’s administration Viktar Sheiman, former minister of internal affaires Yury Sivakou, and former commander of special task squad Dzmitry Paulichenka are banned from entry into the EU countries and the US, because they are suspected of involvement in kidnapping of the oppositionists.