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President Lukashenko continues to tighten his grip on the Belarusian society. His latest display of power concerns the liquidation of youth organisation RADA, using a new law that was implemented at the beginning of this year. According to Eivind Vad Petersson of the Norwegian Youth Council the reason for the liquidation is fear for civic unrest in face of the up-coming presidential elections of March 19. (12-FEB-06)
 

The Russian-Chechen Information Agency is awarded one of the Fritt Ord and ZEIT-Stiftung Press Prizes 2006. This prize is aimed at Eastern European media and journalists who are dedicated to independent reporting and who dare to withstand self-censorship. But for its chief director Stanislav Dmitriyevsky, being independent comes with a price. (13-FEB-05) 
 

Since 3 February the Board of the Association Initiative 33 and the members of the editorial staff of the magazine “Kontrateksty” have been collecting signatures under an appeal to the governing bodies for moderation and caution in making political changes and amendments to legal regulations. The appeal results from the concern caused by the policy performed by the authorities chosen during the fall parliamentary and presidential elections. (10-FEB-06)

On February 7, The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) published the seventh edition of the Book of Missing Persons on the Territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina as part of its ongoing efforts to tackle one of the most serious humanitarian issues in the country. (10-FEB-06)

Can we take for granted that religious leaders are always good and relevant agents of reconciliation? The knowledge and research about this is strikingly limited. Of acts in good faith, on the other hand, there are plenty, writes Ingrid Vik, right, Executive Director of the Nansen Dialogue Project. (09-FEB-06)
 

-At best, what we will get is a political leadership with a weak support base and an equally limited space in which to act. At worst, we will get an armed rebellion. This is the prediciton of Charles Onyango-Obbo, right, former editor of the Monitor, who was recently HRH´s guest to Norway and spoke at the seminar ´Aid and the troubled democracies of east Africa´ last month. (09-FEB-06)
 

3 February the trial was held of Stanislav Dmitrievski, which human rights activists identify as the obvious politically motivated case. The Soviet Court of Nijny Novgorod sentenced Dmitrievsky to the two-year suspended sentence and four years of “testing period” (with prohibition of changing place of residence and obligation to register oneself periodically in a police office). Stanislav Dmitrievski doesn’t agree with the ruling of the court and he is going to appeal against it. (07-FEB-06)
 

Strasbourg: The entire democratic process has been undermined, the political dialogue is jeopardised and the newly elected parliament lacks the democratic credentials of the Azeri people, states the resolution of PACE about the cretentials of the new Azeri delegation after the Parliamentary Elections of November 2005.(04-FEB-2006)
 

On February 3 the Soviet Court of Nizhny Novgorod sentenced Stanislav Dmitrievsky, right, to a two-year suspended sentence and four years of ‘testing period’ with prohibition of changing place of residence. Dmitrievski doesn’t agree with the ruling of the court and he is going to appeal against it. Human rights activists identify the trial as a politically motivated case. (07-FEB-06)