Khotsimsk: another application for a picket against foreign military airbases

Last week Khotsimsk activists of the Belarusian Popular Front filed another appeal to the Khotsimsk District Executive Committee to hold a picket against the deployment of the foreign military airbases on the territory of Belarus.

This time the activists appointed the picet on 20 October and intended to hold it near the Khotsimsk District Cultural Center.

According to the chairman of the Khotsimsk district branch of the Belarusian Popular Front Valery Karankevich, they had to postpone the picket, as far as officers of the Khotsimsk DEC again posed some pretensions to the text of their application.

"We intended to hold a picket in Khotsims against the deployment of foreign military bases on the territory of Belarus on 13 September in front of the Cultural Center”, says Valery Karankevich. “We chose this day on purpose, as far as no other events were apppointed on that day, about which I asked the Khotsimsk ideologists. However, at the beginning of last week Khotimsk officials again started posing pretensions. At first I was asked to bring the list of the prospective members of the picket, to which I responded that the official could come to the picket herself and see them with her own eyes, as far as bringing such lists is not provided for by the law. Then she posed some pretensions to the orthography of the application for the picket, saying that punctuation marks were missing in some places. We corrected it all and filed a new application, for holding the picket on 20 October, as far as the new application for 13 October could be rejected by the officials due to missing the deadline for submission.

The biased attitude of the Khotsims officials is obvious, they are trying to do everything possible to to prevent the holding of the picket against the foreign military bases in Hotimsk, making claims to literally every comma. When I went to complain on this matter to the deputy chairman of the executive committee, Zhana Kazakova, she tried to “sooth” me by saying “you'll have much time left till the New Year to hold it”. I didn't understand what she wanted to tell by saying this,” said Valery Karankevich.

Bear in mind that earlier the Khotsimsk District Executive Committee banned a picket against the deployment of foreign military bases in the settlement of Khotsimsk on 8 September 2013.

The formal reason for banning the picket near the district cultural center was that the applicants allegedly failed to attach the undertaking to hold the picket in that place.

The BPF activists, in their turn, state they have filed such undertaking to the head of the Khotsimsk District Executive Committee Fiodar Vishneuski, but the authorities refused to consider it because of a small erratum, which could be corrected in a few seconds.