Many members of parliament, professors and writers are engaged for the release of Alexander Feduta. Libereco supports this initiative.

 

 

Update: Alexander Feduta was released from prison on 8 April 2011. The Belarusian Interior Ministry stated stated it has been decided to release Feduta on bail, while charges remain.

 

Open letter to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, International Association for Human Rights, Red Cross, governments, embassies, international organizations

 

On 19 December 2010 presidential elections took place in Belarus. On the same day, before the final results were announced, preliminary notices were spread about the victory of the incumbent President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenka. Thousands of people who support candidates of the opposition and have reasons to believe that President Lukashenka had been re-elected through vote fraud went out to the streets of Minsk in protest.

 

A peaceful demonstration of protesters was violently crushed with more than 600 participants taken into custody. Violent arrests and raids on homes of the activists of the opposition and its offices are still continuing. Families of several arrested people have no information about the whereabouts of their husbands, wives, sons, and daughters. Over twenty of the arrested people have been charged with public order offences. They are presidential candidates, members of cultural and academic communities.

 

Alexander Feduta, a prominent historian of literature, a journalist, and an advisor to the presidential candidate Vladimir Neklyayev is among the protesters who have been taken into custody. He was arrested by the State Security Committee (SSC) officers on 20 December at 5 a.m. in his home and since then has been held in a SSC detention center. As many others, he has been charged with public order offences. On the basis of these charges he may be sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment.

 

Alexander Feduta is a member of the Belarus PEN Center, an honorary member of the Lithuanian PEN Center, an author of several books and numerous publications on the Russian, Polish, and Belarusian literature of the 19 century; an active member of the academic community in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. A long-standing observer and an active participant of political life in Belarus, he wrote a well-known political biography of Alexander Lukashenka. The professional and personal reputation of Alexander Feduta have united hundreds people, members of academic and cultural community and free individuals in their call for his and other political opponents' immediate release. They have signed open letters in support of this cause in different countries of the world.

 

Alexander Feduta and other members of the opposition are still in prison, however, at the moment four leading figures of the opposition are released. This play-act of grace should not deceive anyone – the strict home arrest and the written pledge to do not leave town accompanied with the commitment to do not contact any kind of mass-media are far from freedom.

 

The use of violence by the Government of Belarus against the opposition raises grave doubts about the impartiality of Belarusian pre-trial institutions and the justice of Belarusian courts. We want to express our deep concern and appeal to you to take all possible action to ensure that Alexander Feduta and all other members of the opposition are immediately and unconditionally released, and all charges against them are dropped.

 

Prominent Signees of this appeal:

Mantas Adomėnas, PhD, Parliament Member, Lithuania

Imants Auziņš, writer, translator, member of Latvian Writers’ Union, Latvia

Irina Belobrovtseva, professor, Tallinn University, Estonia

Nikolai Bogomolov, chief of Department of Literary and Artistic Critics, Moscow State University, Russia

Semion Bukchin, writer and journalist, member of International PEN Club, Belarus

Leo Burnaru, Romanian poet, translator, member of Moldavian PEN Centre, Moldova / Romania

Dechka Chavdarova, professor, Shumen University, Bulgaria

Anna Dybo, linguist, PhD, Dr hab., corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia

Taras Fediuk, president of Ukrainian Writers’ Association, Ukraine

Lazar Fleishman, professor of Russian Literature, Stanford University, USA

Natalia Gorbanevskaya, poet, Poland / France

Bengt Jangfeldt, writer, professor, Royal Academy of Sciences, Sweden

Birutė Jonuškaitė, vice-chairman of Lithuanian Writers’ Union, Lithuania

Jaan Kaplinski, writer, Estonia

Rita Kindlerova, translator, Czech Republic

Anna Ljunggren, professor, Stockholm University, Sweden

Jonas Liniauskas, chairman of Lithuanian Writers’ Union, Lithuania

Marek Migalski, PhD, Member of the European Parliament, Poland

Piotr Mitzner, professor, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland

Pekka Pesonen, professor, University of Helsinki, Finland

Oleg Proskurin, professor, Emory University, USA

Rein Raud, rector, Tallinn University, Estonia

Laura Rossi, associate professor, University of Milano, Italy

Victor Shenderovich, journalist, writer, Russia

Ludmila Sproģe, professor, head of Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Latvia, Latvia

Renata Šribar, associate professor, Ljubljana University, Slovenia

Boris Uspenskij, professor emeritus of the Oriental University of Naples, Italy

Tomas Venclova, poet, literary scholar, professor, Yale University, USA / Lithuania

Halina Waszkielewicz, professor, Jagiellonian University, Poland

Inese Zandere, editor of magazine “Rigas Laiks”, editor-in-chief of publishing house “Liels un mazs”, poet, member of Latvian PEN Centre, Latvia

 

List of all signatures

 

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