Khotsimsk: civil society activist asks police to find slanderers

April 7, Valery Karankevich, a civil society activist from the urban settlement of Khotsimsk, applied to the Khotsimsk District Police Department.

In his appeal to the head of the police department, A. Talkachou, he asks the police to find the persons who have spread libellous and insulting information about him and to prosecute them under the law.

The reason for the appeal is that the website voskresinfo.com published libellous and insulting articles about Mr. Karankevich during the elections to the local councils of deputies and before them.

"I filed and registered my appeal to the Khotsimsk DPD on April 7”, says Valery Karankevich. Voskresinfo.com regularly publises libellous articles about the civil society activists of the Mahiliou region and all of us guess wh ostands behind this website. Such materials have also been published against me. I believe that libel should get an adequate response, let the police do their work and find who writes and publishes this filth, and hold them accountable under the law."

On the eve of the local elections, defamatory publications about democratic activists and independent candidates for the local councils of the Mahiliou region started regularly appearing on certain Internet resources. Somebody keeps sending letters with links to these articles to local journalists.

Bear in mind that in late March Mahiliou freelance journalist Aliaksandr Burakou, the owner of the domain name formats.by, filed an appeal with the department on combatting crime in the sphere of high technologies of the Main Police Department of the Mahiliou Regional Executive Committee.

In this appeal Mr. Burakou asked the police to identify the persons involved in hacking passwords to the website "Free Format" and bring them to justice according to the Belarusian legislation.

The reason for the appeal was that on March 14 two articles, signed by Ales Lianeuski, were published at the independent website "Free Format". The articles discredited and humiliated public and political activists of the Mahiliou region.

The offenders also deleted all records at the website starting from September 9, 2013.

The Mahiliou journalists who had collaborated with the editors of "Free Format" stated they didn't publish any new articles on the website "Free Format" after the start of their new project “Moloko” (milkmag.by).