Pavel Levinau unable to challenge picket ban

The court session was held in an unusual format - a conference on Skype. Pavel Levinau had hoped that deputy head of the administration of Pershamaiski district Volha Hurchanka would give her comments on-line. But she did not participate in the trial, even with the assistance of modern technology.

Ms. Hurchanka banned the picket, which was scheduled for December 10. The event was to last only one minute. Pavel Levinau wrote in his application that the picket was aimed at promoting and strengthening the development of human rights, promotion of documents in support of human rights and public expression of opinion on the issue of human rights violations.

The official was not interested how the human rights activist wanted to have time to talk about that in just a minute. She was alarmed by another thing: the applicant lacked service contracts with the police, ambulance and utilities. Such agreements are required by the requirements of the Vitsebsk City Executive Committee. Pavel Levinau has sent applications to sign the necessary contracts, but failed to do that after the other party rejected the bids.

“And I never heard any explanations how the mentioned services are necessary during a one-minute event. Mrs. Hurchanka repeatedly refused to participate in court proceedings, and the trials were postponed several times. Finally, I received an offer to participate in the trial via Skype. I agreed, hoping that the official would use this opportunity. However, she refused to participate in the process,” said Pavel Levinau.

Judge Natallia Dasko did not support the complaint and found the ban legal, without listening to the arguments of the human rights defender - references to international law and decisions of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. According to Pavel Levinau, both the ban from the local administration and the position of the court means only one thing: purely formal reasons - reference to the decision of the executive committee, which cannot be performed - are the basis for a violation of individual rights. And the right has been denied to the residents of Vitsebsk for five years already.