This is a press release from Index on Censorship
On 29 September, Natalia Koliada of the Belarus Free Theatre and Mike Harris of Index on Censorship handed in our petition calling for the release of Belarus’s political prisoners to Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. You can read the Deputy Prime Minister’s praise for our campaign here.
Your signature made a huge difference – Nick Clegg told Europe’s leaders in Warsaw:
“You cannot rig an election, squash dissent, destroy liberty, run an economy into the ground without, eventually, paying the price. One of our major banks has now stopped helping the Belarusian government sell its bonds – a blow to the regime’s coffers. It is heartening to see British business and civil society stand together on this.”
But we need your help once more.
You may have seen in The Independent that RBS stopped acting as Belarus’s broker after we confronted bank executives in Edinburgh over the human rights situation in the country.
But Deutsche Bank, Sberbank and BNP Paribas have so far refused to make the same commitment.
Please sign our petition today to call on these banks to stop selling Belarusian government bonds.
And if you can, join us for a protest outside the German Embassy in London this Wednesday at 5pm (details here).
PS – Please tweet the petition too: #freebelarus http://goo.gl/NukvS
