Losing Trust in Lithuania
BY JEREMY DRUKER

Jeremy Druker is the Executive Director and Editor in Chief of Transitions Online (TOL), a media development organization that he co-founded in 1999. TOL publishes an Internet newsmagazine on Central and Eastern Europe and runs journalism and new media training programs with a mission of improving the professionalism, independence, and impact of the media and civil society organizations in this region.

Over the past few years Vilnius has served as something of a sanctuary for Belarusian human rights activists, critically minded students, independent journalists, and other “enemies” of the regime. There is a Belarusian Human Rights House, which provides a meeting space and facilities for human rights defenders, and perhaps the only university operating completely in exile—the European Humanities University, with around 600 students—has its home here. A short and cheap bus trip from Minsk, the city has also proven to be a popular venue for international meetings that gather opposition types.
All of that could be changing, after the recent arrest in Belarus of Ales Bialatski, chairman of the Viasna Human Rights Center. The Belarusian authorities have accused him of tax evasion over money that he received through accounts in Lithuania for his human rights work. Disturbingly, it has emerged over the past week that the authorities in Lithuania were directly involved with providing the Belarusians with the financial information that led to his arrest.

Read more at:
http://eastofcenter.tol.org/2011/08/losing-trust-in-lithuania/