August 4 marks two years after arrest of Ales Bialiatski

On August 4, a number of European cities will hold actions in support of Ales Bialiatski, the head of the human rights centre "Viasna" and Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), who was sentenced in Belarus.

Ales Bialiatski was arrested on August 4, 2011, and on November 24, 2011, a court in Minsk sentenced him to four and a half years in a high security colony. Protests against his arrest and sentencing were voiced in Russia and the countries of Southern Caucasus.

The Internet action in support of Ales Bialiatski will assume that on August 4 the participants of the action will send, through their accounts on the Facebook and Twitter, by means of a specially designed software, the following message: "#Belarus: Today Ales Bialiatski has been in jail for two years for defending #human rights #Free Ales".

Those who wish to support the human rights defender Ales Bialiatski need to go to the page of the action, select the Internet service, which will send the above message from the participant's account and click "I support".

By the anniversary of Bialiatski's arrest, on August 4, starting from 4:00 p.m., the building of the design-factory "Flakon" in Moscow will host a roundtable with participation of human rights activists and experts to discuss the issues of civil society development in Belarus. The roundtable will also see a presentation of the book "Bialiatski's Case" by Valery Kalinovsky, a journalist of Radio Liberty.

Events within the campaign will be also held in Kiev, Vilnius and Warsaw.