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It’s 700 Times More Expensive To Defend Human Rights Than To Violate Them In Belarus

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It’s 700 Times More Expensive To Defend Human Rights Than To Violate Them In Belarus
PHOTO: “NOVY CHAS”

The Babruisk dweller Ales Kavalenka calculated how Belarusian authorities estimate protection of human rights and their violation using his own example.

On August 18, the judge of the Mahiliou Regional Court Mikalai Hladki upheld the sentence of the activists of the civil initiative “Against lawlessness in the courts and prosecutor's office”, the Babruisk dweller Ales Kavalenka, who had held a single person picket at Svaboda Square in Minsk on May 12, “Novy Chas” reports.

On July 11, Babruisk district and the city of Babruisk judge Natallia Cherapukha fined 68-year-old Ales Kavalenka 20 basic units (420 rub.). By the way, the pensioner came to the picket with a placard “Court Officials, give answers to my son and his lawyer’s questions. Stop screening yourself behind formal replies.”

Ales Kavalenka’s son has spent 12 of the 18 years behind bars, having been sentenced for murder. Despite the fact that the Prosecutor General's Office appealed the verdict, the Supreme Court not only rejected the protest of the Prosecutor General, but did not give a substantive reply to the issues raised in the appeals of the convict and his lawyer. In addition, the convict’s father was jailed for 9 years on trumped-up charges of drug trafficking, but after 3 years and 2 months was released, rehabilitated and received monetary compensation for the material and moral damage caused by his unlawful sentence.

All these sufferings have affected the health of the convict’s parents and the welfare of the family.

The father has had a heart attack and an operation done, now he suffers from hand eczema. Due to the emotional stress, the convict’s mother Valiantsina Kavalenka also got ill. To pay for the lawyer, the family was forced to sell their privatized two-bedroom apartment and now huddles in an old wooden house, which they gradually equip with modern conveniences.

In the appeal to the Mahiliou Regional Court against Natallia Cherapukha’s decision Ales Kavalenka exemplifies how the Belarusian authorities assess the protection of human rights and their violation.

So, for an hour of picketing with an attempt to convey the problem of formal replies to the guarantor of the Constitution, the citizen has been punished by the state for 420 rubles, or $ 218 US, which is almost half as Ales Kavalenka’s monthly pension. And that’s for defending his constitutional rights to ancestral lands: his father, a combat pilot Yakau Kavalenka, bombed Berlin on 8 August 1941, as part of the Berlin Red Long-Range Aviation Regiment liberated Belarus and ended the Second World War in Konigsberg.

At the same time, the amount of the monetary compensation, which Ales Kavalenka received for unlawful staying in prison for 3 years and 2 months, was slightly more than 90 rubles( 30 US cents in September 2010).

Thus, it is almost 727 times more expensive in Belarus to protect human rights than to violate them.

Ales Kavalenka will continue to appeal Natallia Cherapukha’s verdict, because he considers it groundless and unlawful.

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