December 19 pickets banned in Babruisk and Baranavichy

Viktar Buzinayeu, leader of UCP’s Babruisk office, received a reply from deputy chairman of the city executive committee Aliaksandr Markachou saying that the activist will not be allowed to hold a picket on 19 December to mark the 2010 crack-down on peaceful protesters following the disputed presidential election.

The picket was expected to be held under a slogan “Elections Stolen to Waste the Country.”

The executive official names the following reasons for the ban: “the applicant failed to specify the type of the mass event, its itinerary and the nationality of the organizer of the event.”

Mr. Markachou also says that the applicant failed to provide written obligations to maintain public order, medical and cleaning services during and after the picket.

Apart from that, the official refers to Art. 8 of the Mass Events Code, which prohibits advertising the event before the receipt of official permission from the authorities.

Viktar Buzinayeu calls the ban a “standard” one.

“They just change the dates, and the replies remain the same. Both the application and the supplement were made in accordance with the law they invented themselves. It looks like the officials have no imagination to think of something new,” says the activist.

A similar picket was banned on 15 December in the city of Baranavichy, after its applicant Anzhalika Kambalava (local UCP leader) received a reply from the city executive committee’s deputy chairman Dzmitry Kastsiukevich.

The ban refers to alleged violating of Par. 4 of the committee’s Decision “On mass events procedures in the city of Baranavichy” of October 5, 2012. Meanwhile, Mrs. Kambalava says she signed a contract with local polyclinic, but failed to sign an agreement with the city’s police department, which became the main reason for the ban.

“We wanted to tell the city residents about the reasons for the decreasing standards of living. We were also going to stress that negative economic developments will never cease when there are no free and fair elections,” says the activist.