Mahiliou: court upholds picket ban
Barys Bukhel, human rights defender from Mahiliou
The verdict was issued
by Andrei Yurchanka, Judge of the Leninski District Court of Mahiliou
on 3 August 2013.
Human rights defender Barys Bukhel tried to
appeal the ban of a picket as well as the ruling of the Mahiliou City
Executive Committee about determining just one place for holding mass
events in the city. The human rights defender says that Judge
Yurchanka refused to suspend the court proceedings until receiving a
decision of the Mahiliou Regional Executive Committee.
“We
wanted to receive a response to our complaint from the regional
executive committee. We asked the executive committee to abolish the
ruling of the Mahiliou City Executive Committee for the appointment
of one place of mass events in Mahiliou, the co-called reservation
for democrats. We haven't received any answer and we wanted the court
to consider the case with the consideration of the response from the
regional executive committee,” said Barys Bukhel.
Moreover, the
human rights defender says that if the answer was negative, it could
be also appealed at the court:
“As it turned out during the
court proceedings, Judge Yurchanka doesn't know the mechanism of
filing an appeal to the UN Human Rights Committee and the precedents
which are connected to Belarus. I had to hold him for an "educational
program", and bring some materials of such cases, in which the
UN Human Rights Committee recognizes the violations committed by the
judicial system of Belarus in respect of certain social activists. He
was impressed, but it did not affect the verdict on our case,” said
Mr. Bukhel.
Bear in mind that the human rights defenders Barys
Bukheil and Aliaksei Kolchyn wanted to hold a picket near the
Mahiliou main post office on the occasion of the second anniversary
of the imprisonment of the human rights defender Ales Bialiatski.
They applied to court after the picket was banned by the local
authorities. Bear in mind that none street actions of the local
democrats have been authorized by the Mahiliou authorities this
year.
