Vitsebsk members of CCP-BPF are prohibited to hold their 7 November action
Yan Dziarzhautsau, Vitsebsk activist of the Conservative Christian Party “Belarusian Popular Front”.
“The Vitsebsk City Executive Committee sent an
answer to our application. According to it, the application was not granted as
we were asking to authorize a meeting and procession in the places where such
actions are not allowed and we would violate the law by holding it. In fact, it
is not us who violates the law in this case,” says a member of the
Conservative-Christian Party “Belarusian Popular Front” Yan Dziarzhautsau.
The city authorities had determined only three places for mass events in an
appropriate ruling. All three are located on the city outskirts. CCP BPF
activists, disagreeing with such state of affairs, applied for authorization of
a procession from the Vitsebsk railway station to Lenin Square, where they also
intended to hold a picket with the aim to inform the public about the
destructive role of the Communist ideology in the development of Belarus, the
purposeful and long-standing destruction of the Belarusian language and culture
by advocates of this ideology.
According to the ruling, organizers of mass events must also attach service
agreements with the police, public utilities and medics to the applications for
authorization of the events. However, the Vitsebk Region Police Department
refused to conclude a service agreement with the applicants – its officers
stated that the action had already been prohibited by the Vitsebsk City
Executive Committee!
The public utilities service answered that it was impossible to conclude such
an agreement as the streets were cleaned by some other enterprises, hired by it
for this purpose. The central polyclinic, in its turn, wrote that many medics
had days of on 6-7 November, that's why it would be allegedly impossible to
send an ambulance car to the mass event.
Mr. Dziarzhautsau also points at another interesting circumstance: only the
executive committee and the police department answered the applications in the
Belarusian language – all other answers were given in Russian, in violation of
the Belarusian legislation which obliges state officials to give answers in the
language of the applicant.
