Belarusian Literary Fund Appeals Its Liquidation by Supreme Court

According to Narodnaya Volia

The review complaints against liquidation of the NGO have been filed to the Supreme Court and Prosecutor General Piatro Miklashevich.

In addition to the review complaint Belarusian Literary Fund sent to the prosecutor a special appeal in connection with liquidation of the organization, which the NGO members consider illegal. ‘The Supreme Court grossly violated the norms of material and process legislation and the constitutional rights of our association and all its members’, reads the statement.

According to the council of Belarusian Literary Fund, the Supreme Court did not give the organization enough time to prepare for the trial (the summons for it was presented to the NGO the day before it). “We are still ready to appeal all remarks of the Ministry of Justice because of which the court issued the liquidation verdict.

According to the Supreme Court, the reasons for liquidation of Belarusian Literary Fund, among the members of which there are about 250 well-known Belarusian writers, are:

1) litter on the territory of the sanatorium-preventorium of writers Islach;

2) alleged violation of the charter of the NGO which is ostensibly confirmed by ‘a letter addressed to the Ministry of Justice on Belarus by 149 members of the organization’

The history of the ‘letter of 149’ is quite scandalous. ‘We consider the mentioned letter of former members of the public association Belarusian Literary Fund as libel and deception of the state institutions. In this letter 28 persons complain on behalf of 149 members of the association that they were not invited to the General Assembly of the organization in 2005. All members of Belarusian Literary Fund were invited to the assembly. Moreover, among the 28 signers of the letter there are a number of persons who put their signatures in the registration list of the assembly,’ write to the prosecutor Eduard Akulin, Ales Danilchyk, Anatol Kudravets, Ales Pashkevich, Barys Sachanka, Mikhas Skobla, Kastus Tsvirka, Vasil Yakavenka, Ernst Yaluhin and Yazep Yanushkevich.

The liquidation of Belarusian Literary Fund was made on delation of the ‘offended’. The council of the organization informs Piatro Miklashevich that it will inform the Belarusian confederation of creative unions and the International Literary Fund (Moscow) about the catastrophic situation. ‘The Supreme Court of Belarus can not violate the international legislation and ignore the interests of the International Literary Fund (the legal successor of the USSR Literary Fund co-founded by the public association Belarusian Literary Fund) which includes more than 15 writers’ literary funds of the former USSR and European countries,’ reads the appeal.

The council of the Belarusian Literary Fund insistently asks the prosecutor to demand from the Supreme Court the case on its liquidation, issue a protest against the verdict and return the case for re-consideration.