Supreme Court didn’t grant appeal against non-registration of ‘Brestskaya Viasna’

On 18 February the cassation appeal of the founders of the human rights NGO Brestskaya Viasna concerning the verdict of the Brest oblast court of 29 December by which the decision of the justice department of the Brest oblast executive committee on non-registration of the organization was left in force.

The Supreme Court upheld the verdict of the Brest oblast court. The interests of the organization were represented at the trial by human rights defender Uladzimir Vialichkin and lawyer Uladzimir Malei.

Uladzimir Malei said: ‘By refusing to register our civil association the Republic of Belarus violated my civil right to association. The court didn’t take it into consideration and considered only the formal aspect of the appeal. We didn’t ask it to reverse the previous verdict, but issue a new verdict with a glance to the circumstances. The registration denial is disproportional to the scale of the violations that were made by us in the process of registration. These violations were formal and could be easily corrected. It means that the Republic of Belarus imposed a veto on the registration of human rights associations.’

Bear in mind that during the last year the plaintiffs several times held constituent assemblies, introduced changes in the organization charter and filed the corrected documents for getting the organization registered with the state. However, every time the state officers found a new ground for registration denial. Human rights defender Uladzimir Vialichkin says that there was no real dialogue with the authorities, because they weren’t guided by public interests in their work.

Uladzimir Vialichkin: ‘We challenged the court, because the court verdict starts with the words ‘In the name of the Republic of Belarus’, which means that court decisions aren’t separated from the state interests, which means that the court is dependent on the state. We expressed impeachment to the state that violates our rights to association.’

Bear in mind that on 3 September 2009 the Supreme Court of Belarus upheld analogical decision of the Brest oblast court. Brestskaya Viasna has been trying to obtain the state registration since 2004 and five times submitted the registration documents to the justice department of the Brest oblast executive committee. The human rights defenders intend to appeal against the non-registration at the UN Human Rights Committee. They will also continue the attempts to get registered.