Supreme Court Upholds Non-registration of Pensioners’ Association

Source: www.charter97.org

The Supreme Court did not satisfy the claim to the ministry of justice, which refused to register Stareishyny public association of Belarusian pensioners. The decision was made at the final court hearing of the civil case by judge Igar Milto on 5 February.

Primarily, the verdict was supposed to be read out at 2 p.m., but the session was only a few minutes long: the judge recommended the participants of the trial to exchange their replies, and after Uladzimir Ramanouski’s and Uladzimir Strakh’s, Stareishyny’s chairman and deputy chairman, speeches the judge told that the verdict would be announced at 5.15 p.m. and then left for the consultative room.

While commenting on the court verdict to the BelaPAN, Ramanouski stressed that for 1,5 months the initiative group had been arranging a new constituent conference of the association. He does not rule out that the conference may be held in March and the documents for the association registration will be again submitted to the ministry of justice. ‘If our association is again refused registration that will mean the proof of a purposeful political counteraction of the authorities to our official acknowledgement’, believes Ramanouski.

On 14 July 2006 the initiative group on the association creation submitted the documents for the association registration to the ministry of justice and received the refusal. The officials of the ministry of justice motivated the refusal of registration by the absence of the minutes of the constituent conference and non-participation of certain members of the initiative group at the regional meetings.