Fired European Belarus activists may be tried

A former employer does not want to pay the last salary to activist of European Belarus civil campaign Yulia Styapanava and threatens to bring a slander lawsuit  against her.

Yulia received this warning on her e-mail in response to her question about the last salary. “Your file has been sent to our lawyer to prepare a lawsuit to protect honour and dignity of our company. A decision on the date of mutual settlements will be taken after the trial,” the letter reads.

Yulia Styapanava was fired from Swedish  Scandinavian & UK machines AB in May. The girl was said the official reason was her poor work performance.  Firm director Semen Shapkin, who was born in the Soviet Union but currently resides in Sweden, told her in a private conversation she the real reason was her public activity.

Yulia Styapanava thinks there were no complaints at her work, but the director tried to intimidate her.

“Of course, my former boss wants to get by. It is unacceptable for a European company to dismiss on political motives. He was reminded about it in Sweden and will be reminded again. I think he could not expect such a wide response. I have nothing to fear. I did my work well. I met the plan and performed other additional tasks. My task was also sending weekly progress reports. There were no complaints about them. Besides, the company applies a fine of 10% of the salary for errors in reports, failure to meet plans or being late for 10 minutes. No sanctions were applied to me. I have all documents that can prove my words and screenshots of my talks with managers. I had a contract until the end of 2012,” Yulia Styapanava told charter97.org.