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Havel delivers protest to Belarus embassy
AFP
PRAGUE
Petroleumworld.com 03 29 06Former Czech president Vaclav Havel delivered a letter to the Belarus embassy in Prague on Tuesday protesting against the violent breakup of a Minsk gathering following a contested presidential election.
"We show our solidarity with all the victims of repression and call for the immediate release of those detained and the halting of any further procedures against them," the letter said.
It condemned the outcome of the elections and called for the immediate resignation of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Hundreds of demonstrators were arrested in the Belarus capital after Lukashenko won a landslide re-election in the March 19 poll.
No official figures have been given on the numbers detained, but a rights organisation said between up to 100 protesters were being tried Monday and some 700 had been arrested and were being held.
Havel, co-founders of the Czech association "Citizens' Belarus" and several Czech lawmakers tried to deliver the protest letter by hand but were prevented by Belarus officials. They left the letter in the embassy letter-box.
Havel led the dissident protest against the Czechoslovak communist regime before its collapse in 1989, and went on to become the president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic.
The association was created in June last year to promote human rights in the ex-Soviet bloc country.
The letter warned Lukashenko's regime that it would be held responsible for its actions. "There are few places in today's world where you can hide from the charges made by an international court," it said.
It also called on the Belarus intelligensia, journalists and artists to oppose the "dumbing-down of their fellow citizens" by Lukashenko's policies shunning the West.
"We ask for all Belarussians to overcome their fears and insist on their fundamental rights to freedom in a legal and democratically-administered state where the government will not hide behind police units with tear gas and anti-protest grenades," it concluded.
AFP 28 03 06 1401 GMTCopyright © 1994-2006 Agence France-Presse. All Rights Reserved.
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