Not trial but farce

The court of the Chyhunachny district of Homel fined 20 and 40 basic units the first secretary of the regional committee of the Belarusian Communist Party Uladzimir Syakerka and human rights activist Anatol Paplauny.

On September 16, Homel opposition activists were going to hold a picket of solidarity with families of Viktar Hanchar and Anatol Krasouski, disappeared 10 years ago, but they were detained by militia before the picket began. Administrative reports against 16 detained were drawn up in a militia department.

“it was not a trial but a farce,” Syakerka told in an interview to BelaPAN after the trial. “the court didn’t receive any of my petitions on summoning a witness, on attaching to the case a video material taken by militia, showing we hadn’t committed anything unlawful, on the contrary we had been caught by militia officers and forced to get into a bus.”

Paplauny’s motion for enterpriser’s service was satisfied, the trial was held in Belarusian.

As we have informed earlier, on October 13, the court fined seven democratic activists; the total sum of the fine was 7,525,000 rubles.

Militia officers told at the trials that the detained had marched in an organized way holding portraits of missing Hanchar and Krasouski. The activists tried to prove they hadn’t had any posters and symbols, because they planned to start the picket on Rebellion square.

The rest participants of the picket haven’t been summoned to court yet.

The document of the militia department of the Homel region executive committee says that the oppositionists were detained after an anonymous telephone call to militia. An anonymous person allegedly said an “anti-social action” was planned on Rebellion square in Homel.