§ Lord Hyltonasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they have received reports of major disappearances of people in Belarus; and if so, whether they will raise this matter with the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe or other appropriate body. [HL4510]
§ Baroness Symons of Vernham DeanHMG are aware of a number of unsolved disappearances in Belarus including those of the former Interior Minister, General Yuri Zakharenko, the former First Deputy Speaker of the dissolved 13th Supreme Soviet, Viktor Gonchar, his business associate, Anatoly Krasovsky, and a cameraman for the Russian Public Television channel ORT, Dmitry Zavadsky. We and our EU partners have raised these cases with the Belarusian authorities. Our concerns have centered on the failure of the authorities to make any substantive progress in investigating the fate and the whereabouts of those missing; to conduct such investigations in a thorough, impartial and transparent fashion; and to account satisfactorily for the alleged involvement of senior state officials in these disappearances.
In September 2002 the Council of Europe created a sub-committee to clarify the circumstances of each case. The EU and US sponsored a resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights this year, which called for a full and impartial investigation into the disappearances. Our embassy will continue, in concert with EU representatives and the OSCE office in Minsk, to monitor developments on this and other issues of human rights concern. The Government of Belarus will have to demonstrate progress towards the standards expected of an OSCE member state before relations with the EU can be improved.