Homel: Trial of Public Activists Andrei Tolchyn and Siarhei Tryfanau Is Posponed to 13 March

On 9 March Homel Tsentralny Borough Court considered the administrative cases against Andrei Tolchyn and Siarhei Tryfanau. The trial was attended by the OSCE observers.

The agitator Andrei Tolchyn was accused of violation of article 45 of the Electoral Code and ruling of the chair of Homel City Executive Committee #45 About the order of the distribution of the agitation materials of candidates to the presidential position of the Republic of Belarus and also ruling of the Central Election Commission #13 about the order of the use of mass media. The matter is that the police five times detained him with booklets of Aliaksandr Milinkevich and the newspapers Narodnaia volia and Tovarishch that published the candidate’s program.

At the trial the worker of the ideological department of Homel CEC Iryna Klimovich, who composed five violation reports on Mr Tolchyn, couldn’t tell what the essence of his violations was. The only accusation she could give was that he distributed the materials in a wrong place and in a wrong manner (handing out). However, during the trial it was found that the ruling of the CEC chair about distribution of the printed materials had been abolished. Finally, the judge Maryna Damnenka postponed the trial of Andrei Tolchyn to 13 March.

Siarhei Tryfanau was given the same accusations. He demanded from the court to provide an interpreter, because the trial was led in Russian and he said he didn’t know Russian well enough. The judge explained that the court didn’t have any interpreter and postponed the trial to 13 March as well.