Svetlahorsk: Local Activists Are Fined

11.04.2006.

According to the press-service of the Assembly of NGOs

U.Kukar, chair of the organizational and staff department of Svetlahorsk District Executive Committee, composed the reports with the statement that Viktar Akhramchuk, Natallia Bordak and Sviatlana Mikhalchanka used portable stands (in fact, these were small boards with Milinkevich’s portraits). In these reports he also stated it was a violation of the decision of Svetlahorsk DEC to place agitation materials in the places that weren’t meant for it. The trial lasted for several days. Vice-chair of Svetlahorsk District Board of Internal Affairs Piatro Zykun tried to prove the agitators ‘carried a stand that was higher than 1,6 meters and organized pickets’. When the defenders brought to the trial one of the boards with the portraits, Mr Zykun said that ‘it used to have wooden foots, but they sawed them off’.

The public activists also read to the court the explanations of the notions ‘picket’ and ‘stand’ that are provided in the legislation and in explanatory dictionaries. It’s worth mentioning that Viktar Akhramchuk is the chair of a branch of the BPF Party and Sviatlana Mikhalchanka is the first secretary of Svetlahorsk District Committee of the Party of Communists of Belarus. Both of them are pensioners.

Svetlahorsk District Vice-procurator Raman Herasimau demanded to fine them 310 000 rubles each. The judge Iryna Aliseika reduced this sum to 93 000 rubles for Akhramchuk and Mikhalchanka and fined 62 000 rubles the unemployed mother of three children Natallia Bordak, secretary of Svetlahorsk district board of the Belarusian Language Society.

U. Kukar is dissatisfied with the verdict and is going to complain to Minsk Regional Court against it.