Ministry of Justice vs. Nasha Viasna: Everything fair

The Ministry of Justice is collecting data on the founders of the Nasha Viasna human rights association, growing more and more inventive in finding faults with the organization’s application.

In particular, the state officials keep checking the addresses of Nasha Viasna’s members. On 6 February, during a telephone conversation, a representative of the Ministry tried to learn information on the actual place of residence of one of Nasha Viasna’s members Ilya Bohdan. However, the Ministry of Justice addressed the grandmother of Bohdan, not the activist himself, which, according to the human rights experts, is an evidence of the Ministry’s amateurishness, since it seems to have started using investigative means, thus going beyond its authority.

As we reported before, Nasha Viasna’s registration is being supervised by Aliaksandr Kharyton, a representative of the Ministry of Justice involved in mass suspensions of Belarusian NGOs and later added to the EU travel ban list, along with a number of other key state officials.

The founders of the Nasha Viasna human rights association have repeatedly stressed that in case the organization is denied registration due to trivial and groundless reasons, the decision will be viewed as an evidence of system political discrimination and Belarus’ unwillingness to introduce mass reforms aimed at further liberalization of the country’s political and civil system.