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Court didn’t punish officials for failure to present information to ecologists

2011 2011-01-14T19:21:58+0200 1970-01-01T03:00:00+0300 en

The Hrodna Region Economic Court refused to oblige the direction of the construction of the nuclear power plant in Astravets to familiarize the public circles with documentation concerning the NPP construction. According to Regnum, this information was given on 12 January by a lawyer of the Ekadom NGO, Siarhei Mahonau.

The lawsuit was filed last spring. According to Mr. Mahonau, the refusal of the officials to present the documents is a violation of the Aarhus convention and the Law On Environmental Protection.

As a representative of Ekadom Iryna Sukhii said on live air of Euroradio, all attempts to receive the needed documents either in paper or in electronic files failed. The officials stated that these documents were their ‘value’ and that they spent some means. They proposed the ecologists to familiarize with 3,000 pages in their office. ‘It is a violation of Aarhus Convention. Ecological information cannot be anyone’s property! It is the first case of a trial concerning access to information,’ commented Iryna Sukhii.

According to Mr. Mahonau, the official reason for the refusal to present the documentation is that it was almost completely uploaded to the website of the direction and was available to the public there. Ecologists say that the direction should have done it much earlier.

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