Charter 97 ( be, Хартыя'97; russian: Хартия'97) is a declaration calling for democracy in

Belarus Belarus,, , ; alternatively and formerly known as Byelorussia (from Russian ). officially the Republic of Belarus,; rus, Республика Беларусь, Respublika Belarus. is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by ...

and a pro-

human rights Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...

news site taking its inspiration from the declaration. The document – the title of which deliberately echoes the Czechoslovak human rights declaration

Charter 77 Charter 77 (''Charta 77'' in Czech and Slovak) was an informal civic initiative in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic from 1976 to 1992, named after the document Charter 77 from January 1977. Founding members and architects were Jiří Něm ...

20 years earlier – was created on the anniversary of a referendum held in 1996, and which, in the words of the organization of the same name, declares:

"devotion to the principles of independence, freedom and democracy, respect to the human rights, solidarity with everybody, who stands for elimination of dictatorial regime and restoration of democracy in Belarus".

Belarusian journalist Pavał Šaramiet acted as the group's spokesman at the declaration's public launch. Charter 97, as a citizens' human rights organisation based on the principles outlined in this document, is a non-partisan organisation which has organised protest rallies and has provided a springboard for other democratic movements in the country. It also maintains a website of news with a focus on human rights developments. The site's editor-in-chief, Natalla Radzina, received the 2011 International Press Freedom Award, "an annual recognition of courageous journalism", for her work. On 3 September 2010, the body of the founder of Charter 97, Aleh Biabienin, was found in his house near

Minsk Minsk ( be, Мінск ; russian: Минск) is the capital and the largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative stat ...

. According to initial statements by the Belarusian government, Biabienin committed suicide by hanging himself. However, friends of Biabienin have rejected this, stating that there was no indication he was planning to commit suicide, and that there were no messages or notes left behind. In the weeks following the disputed December 2010 presidential election – in which pro-democracy candidate Andrej Sańnikaŭ lost to Lukashenko, often called "Europe's last dictator" – a number of opposition protesters took to the streets, alleging fraud. Radzina and the ''Charter 97'' staff posted numerous articles documenting arrests and injuries to the protesters by state security forces. On 21 December 2010, the ''Charter 97'' office was raided by agents of the

State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus The State Security Committee of the Republic of Belarus (KGB RB; russian: Комитет государственной безопасности Республики Беларусь, КГБ РБ; be, Камітэт дзяржаўнай бяс ...

(known in Russian as the "KGB"). Radina only had time to post "We're all at the KGB" on the site before being arrested and taken away. On 30 December 2011, ''Charter 97'' fell victim to a hacking attack that deleted archives and posted false news articles to the site; it also suffered a

denial of service In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) is a cyber-attack in which the perpetrator seeks to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users by temporarily or indefinitely disrupting services of a host conne ...

attack. In 2020, the logo was changed to display "Charter 97%", referencing the fact that according to opposition groups, internet polling shows that support for President Lukashenko is low enough to be a

statistical error In statistics and optimization, errors and residuals are two closely related and easily confused measures of the deviation of an observed value of an element of a statistical sample from its " true value" (not necessarily observable). The erro ...

, or around 3%. The phrase "97%" had become a rallying symbol of the opposition.

References

External links

Charter 97 website
{{Authority control Belarusian opposition Politics of Belarus 1997 in Belarus 1997 documents Political charters

See also

References

External links