Supreme Court didn’t grant claim of Belarusian Christian Democracy
On 18 February, Vital Rymasheuski and Pavel Seviarynets, co-Chairpersons of the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party, and Dzianis Sadouski, BCD Senior Secretary, weren’t admitted to the sitting of the Supreme Court at which the verdict on the case BCD v. Justice Ministry was announced.
Only Michael Scanlan, Chargé d'Affaires ad interim of the United States in Belarus, Ernst Kress, representative of the German Embassy in Minsk, and Liubou Luniova, a journalist with RFE/RL, were admitted to the trial.
The Supreme Court refused to grant the BCD demand on finding unlawful the decision of the Ministry of Justice not to register the party.
The ministry explains the non-registrations by referring to inaccuracies in the lists of the founders of the party. BCD co-Chairpersons, in their turn, stated about an unprecedented pressurization of the founders who were threatened to make them to refuse from their signatures in the constituent documents.
On 16 February the BCD presented to the court the witnesses in whose personal data the Ministry of Justice ostensibly had found inaccuracies. Sviatlana Shablouskaya, resident of Bykhau, witnessed that the Chairperson of the justice department of the Mahiliou oblast executive committee pressurized her into refusing from her signature under the founding documents of the BCD.
On 17 February, BCD co-Chairperson presented to the court the documents that witnessed that other mistakes found by the Ministry of Justice in the registration documents, could be corrected. However, the prosecutor and the judge ignored the testimonies of the present BCD of witnesses and refused to summon other witnesses.
