His Excellency Alexander Lukashenko
President of Belarus
C/o HE Ambassador to UK
belarus@belemb.freeserve.co.uk

27 October 2004

Your Excellency,

We are writing on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum, which represent 18,000 publications in 100 countries, to express our outrage at the murder of journalist Veronika Cherkasova.

According to reports, the body of Ms Cherkasova, a reporter for the newspaper Solidarnost, was found with multiple stab wounds at her apartment in Minsk on 20 October. Ms Cherkasova primarily covered social and cultural news but occasionally wrote about politically sensitive issues such as drug abuse. About four months ago, Ms Cherkasova wrote a series of articles entitled "The KGB is still following you", outlining the methods of surveillance the Belarusian Security Services use to monitor civilians’ activities, and was recently thought to have been working on a story on religious sects.

Police, who did not immediately exclude the possibility of Ms Cherkasova being killed for her work as a journalist, reportedly found no evidence of a break-in and nothing was taken from the apartment.

We respectfully call on you to ensure that there is an immediate and thorough investigation into Ms Cherkasova’s murder and that those responsible are swiftly brought to justice. We urge you to take all possible steps to ensure that journalists are able to carry out their professional activities without fear of violence and intimidation.

We look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Yours sincerely,
Seok Hyun Hong
President
World Association of Newspapers

George Brock
President
World Editors Forum
cc : Mr Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations
Mr Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General, UNESCO