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On the International Human Rights Day, 10 December, 12 international civic and human rights organisations start a joint online petition at www.belarus-petition.org. The human rights defenders urge the acting President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and the 19 December 2010 newly elected President to respect and guarantee human rights in the Republic of Belarus.

The embassy will be handed over tens of thousands of signatures on the protest letter to Liu Xiaobo, collected in Norway and internationally.

The banners for the demonstration will call “Free Liu Xiaobo!” and “Free all Prisoners of conscience in China”.

The procession will start with speeches at Youngstorget and end in front of the Grand Hotel, where a picture of Liu Xiaobo will be projected throughout the hotel front in the absence of the Nobel Peace Prize winner on the balcony.

There will also be held torchlight processions in Trondheim and Kristiansand.

On the surface we have been seeing a different kind of Lukashenko the last few months, with less tension, repressions and sense of intimidation, both Tatiana Reviaka and Pavel Sheremet noted during the seminar organized by the Norwegian Helsinki Committee on 3 December 2010 at the House of Literature in Oslo. Despite that both experts do not expect these elections to be democratic.

The new Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s report shows that over the past several years, six members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have developed a common system, where individuals who are denied entry to one of the six member states automatically are denied entry to the others. This means an attempt of the states to limit contact between human rights activists at home with their colleagues abroad.

Norway must take the opportunity to address significant contradictions in the Republic of Kazakhstan chairmanship at the Summit, says Bjørn Engesland, Secretary General of Norwegian Helsinki Committee. We should not allow a well-polished façade to blur the fact that Republic of Kazakhstan has been using this chairmanship to get international acceptance of their poor human rights record.

HRHF, represented by Vugar Goyaev, manager of HRH Baku, travels to Strasbourg today as part of an NGO delegation to lobby for Azeri journalist Eynulla Fatullayev’s release. Reporters Without Borders and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers are also part of the joint advocacy effort.

Both Burma and Republic of Azerbaijan let their parliamentary elections, held on the same day – 7 November 2010 – be followed by the release of high-profile political prisoners. While the world condemned the unfair elections, the releases of Aung San Suu Kyi and two Azeri bloggers were widely applauded. Both regimes seem to want to turn international attention away from difficult topics.

One year ago, on November 16, 2009, the Russian lawyer and whistle blower Sergey Magnitsky died in the pre-trial detention centre Matrosskaya Tishina at the age of 37. Magnitsky represented the interests of the Hermitage Capital Fund and revealed fraud from the Russian budget carried out with the participation of Russian law enforcement officers. As a result Magnitsky was arrested himself and held in prison without trial.