On 23 March the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine invited a representative of the Republic of Belarus to Ukraine, and handed him a note of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
According to the MFA press-service, the note expresses a deep concern about the arrest of Ukrainian citizens in Minsk on 21 March 2006, and about non-allowing 16 Ukrainian citizens to arrive in Belarus through “Pishcha-Oltush” admission point (the Republic of Belarus) and 37 Ukrainian citizens through “Udrytsk-Horyn” admission point *(the Republic of Belarus).
The Ministry stresses that these incidents violate, in the first case, the rights of Ukrainian citizens, guaranteed by the international legal obligations of the Republic of Belarus and common international legal documents. In the second case, Belarus violated the right of free movement, which is guaranteed with the Agreement between the governments of Ukraine and the Republic of Belarus on the visa-free entrance of Ukrainian citizens to the Republic of Belarus, and the citizens of the Republic of Belarus to Ukraine, signed on 17 December 1992.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry called on the Belarussian side to act within the framework of its international legal obligations, to provide Ukraine with thorough information about the mentioned-above incidents, and to take the necessary measures to prevent them.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on the night of 24 March, Belarussian police broke up the opposition meeting in Belarus. More than 200 people were arrested, including citizens of Ukraine and Lithuania.
