Foreign experience is inapplicable for Brest authorities
Brest activists of political parties received an answer to their collective
appeal to the deputies of the House of Representatives, which dealt with
improving the law on mass events.
The appeal, which was sent to MPs in August, drew attention to the fact that
under current conditions in the current Law of the Republic of Belarus "On
Mass Events" citizens were deprived of their rights to freedom of
assembly, meetings, street processions, demonstrations and picketing, and the
planned changes to the law could cause more severe restrictions on public
events. This concerns the proposal according to which "the massive
presence of citizens in certain public places at a certain time in order to
carry out pre-planned action or inaction ..." could be considered as a
picket.
The authors of the appeal proposed the authorities to follow the example of
many European countries allow holding mass actions without prior notification,
(not authorization, as it is done now).
As it follows from the answer, signed by Aliaksandr Yushkevich, chairman of the
Commission on Human Rights, National Relations and Mass Media of the House of
Representatives, MPs studied the international experience regarding the legal
regulation of mass events. Yushkevich writes that “regulation of the order of events in a particular country depends on the
socio-political and socio-economic situation, and is defined by the domestic
policies in the State”.
What concerns the notifying order of events in Belarus, according to A. Yushkevich,
the small list of unfrequented places which the authorities specified as places
for mass events, “allow the local executive and administrative bodies and
law-enforcement organs to maximally provide conditions for the
realization of constitutional rights and freedoms citizens, public safety and
public order on the streets, squares and other public places during such actions”.
