Two million fine for participating in official event

For coming to an official event an activist from Baranavichy was fine for 2 million roubles.

A judge Katsiaryna Hruda in Baranavichy passed a resolution, according to which the chairman of the Baranavichy office of the Belarusian Language Society, Movement for Freedom activist Viktar Syryca was fined for 20 basic units. The activist was accused of violating the article 23.34 of the Administrative Code of the Republic of Belarus – organizing and holding an authorized event on the 150th anniversary of Kalinouski rebels’ Milavidy battle.

Accompanied by shouts “Shame” the judged rushed out of the court’s building after the verdict had been passed, the human rights center Viasna reports.

Katsiaryna Hruda did not take into account the words of a major Kuliashou, who said that the event had not taken place since it had been cancelled by the town’s authorities without a media report on the cancellation. Despite that the judge recognized that Syryca was its organizer.

Viktar Syryca believes that neither the shameful protocol, which was re-written three times in order to match the verdict, nor the trial should have taken place at all. Syryca wonders, how a person can be fined, who organized a trip to an officially announced event.

The activist considers it a provocation on the part of police and the authorities that the event was cancelled, and people were not informed. Even when people came to the festival and waited for 30 minutes, neither police, nor the head of the ideology department of Baranavichy’s town executive committee came to tell that the festival would not take place.