Human rights activist hopes for objectivity of chairman of Supreme Court
On 8 June Baranavichy human rights
activist Siarhei Housha filed an appeal to the Head of the Supreme
Court of Belarus Valiantsin Sukala against the verdict of the
Baranavichy court of 21 August 2012 according to which he was
punished with a fine for the alleged use of foul language in a public
place. The activist notes that the Brest Regional Court and the
Supreme Court of the Republic of Belarus didn't grant his appeals
against the illegality of administrative punishment.
The only
reason for the fine is the appeal of the head of a constituency
election commission in Baranavichy, T. Latushava, in which she stated
that S. Housha insulted her and members of the commission by swearing
during the commission's sitting. Mr. Housha was present at the
sitting in as an election observer.
As noted by Siarhei
Housha, the judges considered his appeals formally and
non-objectively, without checking all evidence in the case. The human
rights defender believes that the administrative case against him was
fabricated and the report of administrative violation, drawn up on
him, was composed with violation of requirements of Art. 9.1 of the
Process-Executive Code of Administrative Violations, as far as there
was no sufficient evidence that would indicate the presence of signs
of an administrative offense under Art. 17.1 of the Administrative
Code. This was recognized even by the officer of the Baranavichy City
Police Department who drew the violation report after listening to an
audio recording to Housha's conversation with Tatsiana Latyshava from
the original source, Housha's voice recorder and transferring the
record from the recorder to two computers in his office in the
presence of witnesses.
In his complaint to the Head of the
Supreme Court the Republic of Belarus the human rights activist notes
that courts also didn't take into account the requirement of
paragraph 18 of the Resolution of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of
Belarus on 30 September 2011, under which one-sided, incomplete and
biased investigation of the circumstances of the administrative
offenses take place if the court has not examined all the evidence
that might indicate a lack of offense. The human rights activist said
that all the judges refused to order a linguistic and phonoscopic
examination of the recording of Housha's conversation with the member
of the constituency election commission No. 5 where no foul words can
be heard.
At the end of his complaint Siarhei Housha thanks
the chairman of the Supreme Court for the cancellation of the
previous decisions of the Brest Regional Court in his case and asks
him to abolish the ruling of the Brest Regional Court of 21 March
2013 and the decision of the court of the Baranavichy district and
the city of Baranavichy of 21 August 21 and to drop the charges
against him.
The human rights activist hopes that this time
the chairman of the Supreme Court will take a lawful decision.