Fine for protest against resolution #991

Maskouski district court fined Young Front activist Aleh Valatkouski 1 050 000 rubles (about $ 372) for a demand to cancel the scandalous resolution. The defendant must also pay 500 000 rubles of compensation to utilities enterprise Partyzanskaya.

‘Undoubtedly, Aleh will appeal against the decision of the district court’, Young Front lawyer Anastasiya Loika. ‘The call to resign the government on a concrete slab doesn’t cost this sum. Taking into consideration that the absurd resolution #991 has been annulled, the most we can do is to help the utilities to paint out the inscription’.

Young Front activist Aleh Valatkouski was detained at night on August 5 near the railway station in Minsk when he was wiriting ‘No to Resolution 991’ and ‘Government Must Resign’. Police officers drew up an administrative report for damage to private property. Aleh Valatkouski had to spend 10 hours at the police department and was freed only in the morning. The youth activist told in an interview to www.charter97.org he was questioned by police and a KGB officer.

‘I was detained at 4 a.m. at a railway line and kept for about 10 hours at the police department’, Aleh Valatkouski said. ‘Many policemen talked to me, insulted me. Then I had a conversation with a KGB officer. He asked what I did, where I studied, if I knew Dashkevich, Khvedaruk, Shyla. A report on damage to private property was drawn up against me. Many policemen admitted that if I had drawn ‘Kolya+Tanya’, it would have been normal. But I touched politics... I will be guarded to the court at 3 p.m.’

We remind that resolution #991 of the Council of Ministers banning purchasing agents came into force on 28 July. According to the resolution, all legal entities must buy goods only from direct manufacturers or their official commercial representatives.