Watchdog

MINSK -- The leader of an independent labor union in Belarus says he has been charged with tax evasion.

Henadz Fyadynich, chairman of a union that represents workers in the industry that makes radios and other electronic products, told RFE/RL on August 14 that he had been formally charged and ordered not to leave Minsk.

Belarusian Investigative Committee spokeswoman Yulia Hancharova confirmed to RFE/RL that Fyadynich was charged.

She said the union's bookkeeper, Ihor Komlik, had also been charged with tax evasion.

On August 2, police searched the union's offices and confiscated office equipment and financial documents.

Komlik was arrested and put in pretrial detention at the time.

Fyadynich has said that the case against him, his assistants, and his organization is politically motivated.

He says the case is connected to the union's role in organizing protests in February and March against an unpopular labor law imposing a tax on the unemployed.

SIMFEROPOL -- Five Crimean Tatar activists have been detained while protesting the jailing of Server Karametov, a 76-year-old man who has Parkinson's disease, by the Russian-imposed authorities.

The activists picketed the buildings of the Russia-controlled Supreme Court, Interior Ministry, parliament, and government in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, on August 14.

Lawyer Emil Kurbedinov told RFE/RL that his colleague, Edem Semedlyayev, was with four of the activists who were being questioned at a police station.

The fifth activist was detained separately earlier in the day, local rights activists told RFE/RL.

Karametov was detained on August 8 while demonstrating in Simferopol in support of Crimean Tatars who have been prosecuted by Russia since it seized the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.

He was found guilty of disobeying police, jailed for 10 days, and fined 10,000 rubles ($165).

Amnesty International has urged Russia to release Karametov immediately, calling him "a prisoner of conscience, with Parkinson’s disease."

Russia has been sharply criticized by international rights groups and Western governments for its treatment of members of the indigenous Turkic-speaking Crimean Tatar minority.

The majority of Crimean Tatars opposed the Russian takeover of their historic homeland.