In Moscow on 18 March 2011 a press briefing took place on the deportation from Belarus of Russian human rights defender Andrei Yurov, head of the International Observation Mission in that country. ‘I well understand the unlawful nature of the demands of the authorities of Belarus and we shall appeal against these actions on the national level and the Committee on International Control will also organize international action to pressure Belarus into stopping the use of lists of this kind that include the names of human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers,’ Russian human rights defender Andrei Yurov said, following his deportation from Belarus.

Participants in the press briefing on 18 March 2011 at the offices of the Moscow Helsinki Group (22 Bolshoi Golovin Pereulok, Building 1, Moscow) were:
Andrei Yurov, head of the International Observation Mission in Belarus, development director of the Moscow Helsinki Group;
Ludmila Mikhailovna Alekseeva, chair of the Moscow Helsinki Group, member of the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights;
Sergei Krivenko, member of the board of the International Memorial Society, member of the Presidential Council on Civil Society and Human Rights.

On 16 March 2011 police officers from Minsk’s Soviet District Police Department came to the Minsk apartment where Andrei Yurov was staying and told him he was banned from entering Belarus. The police officers took the human rights defender away to the Soviet District police station where a protocol was prepared setting out his alleged violation of the ban on entry into the country. Andrei Yurov spent that night in a police cell. On 17 March at about 11 o’clock in the morning he was released from detention and ordered to leave Belarus within 24 hours.

Andrei Yurov was ordered to leave Belarus within 24 hours because his name was on a list of persons whose entry into the country is either banned or considered undesirable. According to information obtained by Andrei Yurov’s colleagues, he has been banned from entering Belarus until 2013 on the initiative of the KGB ‘for interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign state.’

However, on 17 March the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus denied information that the Russian human rights defender Andrei Yurov who had been detained in Belarus was on a list of persons not allowed to enter the country.

The question arises on what grounds Andrei Yurov, the head of the International Observation Mission, was detained, and on what grounds was he given notice to leave Belarus within 24 hours?

‘I am leaving Belarus since in any case that was my intention – the only thing is that now I am obliged to fly to Moscow. In addition, I want to demonstrate to the authorities of Belarus the standards of lawful behaviour. I am here as an international observer, a person who monitors the observance of international human rights standards that the state of Belarus has accepted as obligatory. I well understand the unlawful nature of the demands of the authorities of Belarus and we shall appeal against these actions at the national level, and the Committee on International Control will also organize international action to pressure Belarus into stopping the use of lists of this kind that include the names of human rights defenders, journalists and lawyers,’ human rights defender Andrei Yurov said.

The Committee on International Control has said that the International Observation Mission will continue to function and to monitor the observance of international human rights standards in Belarus...