General procuracy to human rights defenders: no grounds to consider Your appeal
The General Procuracy answered the address of the
heads of a number of human rights organizations concerning the problem of
preventive detentions and administrative punishment of civil activists and
representatives of youth opposition group by sending a letter to the E-mail
address of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”.
Representatives of the human rights organizations of Belarus, including the
Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the Human Rights Center “Viasna”, the Committee
to Protect the Repressed “Solidarity”, the Center for Legal Transformation and
he Center for Human Rights had filed a joint address to the Gneral Prosecutor
of the Republic of Belarus Aliaksandr Kaniuk and the head of the Supreme Court
Valiantsin Sukala with the request to meet with them for discussing the
situation around unlawful preventive detentions of civil activists and representatives
of youth opposition groups, abolition of this unlawful practice and punishment
of the perpetrators.
The head of the department of supervision over observance of rights and
freedoms of citizens M. Papova confined herself to a bureaucratic come-off by
writing the following to A. Hulak and others: “Taking into account that You are
not a person who was legally delegated the right to represent the people
mentioned in the appeal, there are no sufficient grounds to consider Your
appeal on its merits”.
M. Papova refers to Article 2.16 of the Process-Executive Code of
Administrative Offenses, according to which the right to appeal process actions
or ruling concerning cases of administrative offenses belongs to defendants,
victims, their legal representatives, witnesses, experts, interpreters and
other participants of administrative proceedings.
Other than that, representation of interests of citizens during applications to
state institutions and other organizations is conducted on the basis of a legal
act of the Republic of Belarus or an act of an empowered state body or a
self-government body or a warrant of attorney composed in conformity with
requirements of the civil legislation of the Republic of Belarus.
However, human rights defenders didn't seek to represent interests of citizens
in any administrative trials, they just asked for a meeting with the Prosecutor
General and the head of the Supreme Court with the aim to discuss the
situation, get the unlawful practice stopped and the perpetrators punished. The
procuracy hasn't given a substantial answer, though.
