“BelaPAN” to be tried instead of “Uzgorak” newspaper
Halina Budnaya
The trial of BelaPAN’s case has been scheduled for 27 March.
On 10 March in the court of the Horki district, Mahiliou region, the consideration of the lawsuit has started of the chairwoman of the Horki district organization of the Belarusian Association of the Hadicapped Tamara Kaltunova against the newspaper “Uzgorak” and its editor-in-chief Halina Budnaya. Tamara Kaltunova accused the newspaper of slander and demanded to charge her with the amount of 50 million rubles. The case was considered in Horki district court by the judge Viktar Yaskevich, the defendant was represented by a lawyer of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Aleh Ahieyeu.
The proceedings started at 11 a.m. At the beginning of the trial the defendants on the case were the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Halina Budnaja and a private company “Uzgorak” that publishes the newspaper.
Judge Viktar Yaskevich attentively studied the case. The court concluded that the information, published in the newspaper, came to “Uzgorak” from the BelaPAN news agency, that is why Halina Budnaya was not the right defendant on the case. The court ruled that the new defendant on Tamara Kaltunova’s lawsuit will be the BelaPAN agency. Horki District Court will send the relevant materials to BelaPAN.
The next session of the Horki District Court is scheduled for 27 March 2014, 11 a.m.
In her lawsuit Tamara Kaltunova demanded to charge the “Uzgorak” newspaper with 50 million rubles as a compensation of moral damage and publish refutation of the materials the newspaper published.
The reason for the lawsuit was the article, published in “Uzgorak” last year, in which the trial was described of the members of the Association’s members and the chairman of the Horki affiliate Tamara Kaltunova.
According to “Uzgorak”s editor-in-chief Halina Budnaya, all the articles in the newspaper were taken from the news-feed of the BelaPAN news agency with a respective reference to it. “Uzgorak” newspaper did not publish any materials of their own on the conflict at the Horki District Association of the Handicapped.
