Rubtsou may be tried for another criminal case

Yury Rubtsou was summoned for an interrogation to the Investigative Committee in Pruzhany.

They drew up a paper that the political prisoner had refused to give explanations. Yury Rubtsou said that he had not been given any papers for examination, but they stated that he had allegedly insulted the head of the squad, Radio Svaboda reports.

"It seems like somebody does not like that I can keep in touch with. And, perhaps, they want to "close" me. They wrote that I had allegedly insulted the chief of the squad. If saying straight out to a person that he is a scoundrel may be an insult, then yes, I said it. It happened because the chief has not given me yet the promised copies of necessary documents. I told him that if you were a scoundrel, then I did not want to talk to you. Because I named him a "scoundrel" they initiate a criminal case", Yury Rubtsou said after interrogation.

According to the political prisoner, the Investigative Committee did not provide him with any documents for examination.

"Judge for yourselves: A person do not keep his promise, he says. - I asked him to give me the document for examination setting up not only my obligations, but also rights. But he did not keep his promise. In the presence of prisoners I asked him whether he believed Lukashanka about $600 salary. He said he did. Ok, I say, then find me this job. Then he gave me the decision of the Chairman of Minsk City Court to examine, and I asked to make a copy. But my request has not been satisfied yet. How should I treat such a person?

Also Rubtsou said that he was denied a book of complaints and suggestions, because he was the prisoner.

"But a prisoner does not mean that he is deprived of all rights,"he said." I have restrictions on free movement, but not on my rights. But on the basis that I am a prisoner, I am denied the book of complaints. They are not satisfied with such my behavior. Therefore, they want to isolate me in order to cut off from communication with the outside world.

Because of me some people started to feel more freedom and understand what dignity means. They gave up cleaning the police duty room. But, sorry, each person watches over the purity of his workplace, and prisoners must not clean the police room. They say that it has been cleaned for 30 years by prisoners and it will continue. So, they dislike me, because I have ruined the whole their system of humiliation they built. They don't realize that a work is not a duty, but a human right. It seems like in accordance with an instruction I cannot give up a work I am expected to do. They cannot make me sign an employment contract. And without it no employer will give me the job.

The Constitution says about the right to work, but it has been replaced by obligation. There is a contradiction in the law, and I demand it to be changed. But I receive runaround replies that it complies with the law".

Yury Rubtsou also said that he had been given two warnings allegedly for refusing to work.

"Although I denied not to work, but low wages. And they want to classify it as evasion of term for serving punishment. This is a pure nonsense, and I can't get logic and sense of it. Nobody deprived me of the constitutional right to work. This is a right, but not an obligation. It's not the same thing. But they cannot understand it", he said.

In October 2014 Natallia Vaitsekhovich, the judge of the Central District Court of Minsk, sentenced Yury Rubtsou to one and a half years of imprisonment in an open type institution for insulting the judge Kiryl Palulekh. He tried the activist in spring after the rally "Charnobylski shliakh 2014" (Chernobyl Way - 2014). Rubtsou was wearing the t-shirt with inscription "Lukashenka, go away!". Police detained the activist and brought him to court wearing pants only. When the judge Kiryl Palulekh agreed to try Yury wearing this t-shirt, he, according to the judge, called him "bastard".

Viasna Human Right Center and the Belarusian Helsinki Committee stated that Yury Rubtsou's deprivation of liberty in an open type institution gave grounds to consider him a political prisoner.