HELSINKI COMMITTEE HEAD ARRESTED IN BELARUS.

Tatsyana Protska, the chairwoman of the Belarus Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, was arrested on October 23 on charges of disobedience to the police and obstruction of a police action. She was detained while observing the police in the process of searching the home of a persecuted kolkhoz chairman, two of whose relatives were recently arrested on orders from President Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The charges against Protska carry a penalty of up to two weeks in prison under an administrative procedure. She was scheduled to testify to an international human rights meeting in Geneva on October 30 on the human rights situation in Belarus. (Belapan, Russian agencies, October 24-25) The Protska case would seem to be the first known arrest of an accredited Helsinki Committee leader in any former Soviet republic since the collapse of communism.

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