UN Human Rights Committee registers complaint by activist Halina Yubko

The Geneva-based UN Human Rights Committee has registered an individual complaint submitted by Minsk resident Halina Yubko, the Nasha Niva newspaper reports.
In her interview with the BelaPAN news agency, Mrs.Yubko said that on 19 January 2007 she applied for holding a picket to Minsk city authorities. She, together with 50 other women from all over the country, was going to express her dissent to the conviction judgments awarded to their relatives for civil and criminal offences. The picket was meant to attract public and governmental attention to the issue of violating Constitutional rights and international treaties while considering criminal and civil cases.
‘However, the application was rejected by the city authorities due to ‘the picketers’ intervention in the work of courts’, said Mrs.Yubko.
On 27 February 2007 she lodged a complaint against the illegal decision with Minsk Maskouski Court. On 3 April the complaint was turned down by Judge Volha Husakova. ‘For eight months I addressed all the levels of the judiciary in Belarus, including the Constitutional Court. Having exhausted all national remedies, on 18 February 2009 I submitted an individual complaint to the UN Human Rights Committee, with a demand to confirm that Minsk city authorities had violated the right to free expression of one’s thoughts and the right to peaceful assembly, guaranteed by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Belarus is a State party’, said Mrs.Yubko.
According to a lawyer Tamara Siarhei, the Committee will give the Belarusian authorities six months to make their comments on the complaint. In case Mrs.Yubko’s rights are restored within the period, the Committee will suspend the case. Otherwise, the procedure of consideration will begin, says the lawyer.