Maidan

If the Russian authorities expel Abdugani Kamaliyev (Tursinov), an Uzbek married to a Russian national, tonight, they will do so in violation of their own legislation and the European Court of Human Rights! And they cannot say that they didn’t know in time.

Statement from the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group regarding the believed deployment of a special force unit in a penal colony, the haste with which the authorities have reached conclusions claiming the contrary, and why their checks leave so very many question unanswered

Myroslava Svystovych is presently appealing against both the untoward circumstances of her removal from office as Mayor of Irpin (Kyiv region) and against what she and other independent observers have suggested were serious violations of electoral procedure during the new elections

While attention has been focused on Kyiv over the last few months, democracy would seem to have been under siege not so far away. There are some very disturbing echoes of 2004 in the recent mayoral election in Irpin (Kyiv region)

March 23, 2006. MISNK, Belarus. -- Maidan International, an independent non-profit organization, raised $811.27 in a single day from Belarusians living throughout the globe to support the protest.

March 22, 2006. Minsk, Belarus. -- The pro-democracy rally continued in Minsk despite a call from one of the two democratic candidates, Mr Kozulin, to leave and come back on March 25, which the protesters overwhealmingly ignored. The Third Way community (a civic org): "The protesters on the Kastrychnitska Place need your help!"

Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in his prison cell in Hague.

10,000 Belarusian citizens have gathered today in Svaboda (Freedom) Square in Minsk to meet the candidate of united democratic forces, Alyaksandr Milinkevich. Thousands of interior troops, SWAT, riots police officers, have been drawn to the city. SWAT commander Dzmitry Paulichenka was in charge of the force operation. He is suspected of abductions and murders of Belarusian oppositionists and a journalist.

March 02, 2006, 16:40

Today candidate for presidency in Belarus, Alyaksandr Kazulin has been brutally beaten up by people in mufti, allegedly officers of the Interior Troops brigade SWAT (SOBR). He was beaten during the attempt to register in the Palace of Railway Workers as a participant in the so-called “all-Belarusian assembly”. Witnesses say that Kazulin was beaten up personally by SWAT commander Dzmitry Paulichenka, suspected of Belarusian journalist and oppositionists’ abductions and murders by international community.

It is the 16th of the month again, and we remember not only Viktor Honchar and Anatoly Krasovsky who disappeared in Belorus on 16 September 1999, but all those persecuted for wanting to breathe freely, speak openly and live without lies and oppression in their own native Belorus.
Throughout Belorus tonight at 8 p.m. people will be turning off their lights and burning candles in memory - and in hope.