Mogilev: fine for transporting the newspaper "Our Mogilev" and newsletter "Social Democrat" is remained in force

Today, September 25, Mogilev Regional Court in the face of Judge Mikalaj Hladki remained in force the decision of the Mogilev district court regarding about the fine of 30 basic units and confiscation of almost 12 thousand papers at the vice-president of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Hramada) Ihar Barysau.

The Social-Democrat disagrees with the decision of the court of and intends to appeal to a higher court in the near future.
- First, the decision of district court could have been cancel on formal grounds, as there had been many irregularities and inaccuracies: the court has not been established what kind of the printed materials were exactly confiscated - flyers, newsletters or newspapers; the part of the violated article 17 of the Law "On the Media” wasn’t pointed out. Secondly, the decision of the judge Stanislau Leuchanka of the district court is contrary to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the Republic of Belarus. That is, the state has no right to curtail the freedom of expression and the the freedom of the press including by usage of domestic regulatory documents, - said Igor Borisov.
Vice-president of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party notes that if the supervisory appeal to the Chairman of the Mogilev court won’t have a positive solution, then he is going to bring the matter to the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations.
- There were precedents by the fact that independent newspapers have been confiscated earlier in Belarus, and there are two solutions of UNHRC on this issue - these are cases of Milinkevich, Katsora and Kornienko. UN Human Rights Committee ruled that in these cases there was a violation of their rights. It is noteworthy that the judge Mikalaj Hladki refused to read out loud the results of these cases during the trial, despite the fact that I have twice asked him to do it.