Homel Administration Ignores Verdict of Constitutional Court

Homel citizen Iryna Rudziak complained to Human Rights Center “Viasna” that he couldn’t get the personal audience of the head of Homel Regional Executive Committee (REC) for a long time. The committee officials sent to her come-offs, but didn’t provide any audience. As it was found from the correspondence of I. Rudziak with the officials, Homel REC adopted an instruction that limited legal rights of citizens.

The lawyer Valiantsin Stefanovich comments on the situation:
-- Reception of citizens at Homel Regional Executive Committee is regulated by Instruction No. 267 that was adopted on 17 April 2003. Point 9 of the instruction contains demands from citizens to register for personal reception only on written application that is to contain only legal issues that haven’t been solved by duty officials. It means that citizens can’t simply get audience of the committee head – they are to write an application and to prove there that their claims are legal. Such system is very convenient for getting rid of people instead of dealing with their problems. Besides, there’s a decision of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Belarus of 15 April 2004 by which similar paragraph in the Ruling on order of reception at Minsk City Executive Committee was found incompatible with the Law of the Republic of Belarus “About Applications of Citizens”. By this decision the action of this paragraph was stopped. On 7 May Minsk CEC set it aside and introduced appropriate changes to its Ruling. Now Minsk citizens don’t have to prove the legality of their demands to meet with the CEC head. However, citizens of Homel region still have to do it, despite the fact that, according to part 2 of Article 9 of the Law of the Republic of Belarus “About Constitutional Court of the Republic of Belarus” the norms that are analogical to those that were found unconstitutional, are to lose their force as well. It means that Homel REC must introduce amendments to its instruction by appropriate decision. I believe that instructions that limit legal interests of citizens can be used in other executive committees as well.