Valiantsin Stefanovich put on black list by “technical failure”

It took more than three months for the citizenship and migration department at the Ministry of Internal Affairs to admit that Valiantsin Stefanovich was put on the travel ban list by mistake.

On 13 June, Stefanovich received a letter from department chief Biahun. The letter says the military commissariat did not restrict his right to travel outside Belarus, but as can be concluded from numerous requests from individuals, some technical glitches occurred in a period from 24.February 2012 till 10 March 2012 that resulted in putting Stefanovich on the blacklist by mistake.

It should be noted that the “glitches” were rather strange, because they affected only public activists, human rights defenders and journalists. They spent much time and efforts to defend their right to travel.

The letter says the Ministry of Internal Affairs carries out a validity check of the information sent to the data bank from governmental agencies during the specified period and promises to remove the wrongful information from the data bank.

Unfortunately, the department chief Biahun does not say when the check will be completed. Taking into account it took three months to find an error, the check can be very long. The deputy head of HRC “Viasna” Valiantsin Stefanovich cannot leave Belarus until the end of the check.