'Non-Parasites Marches' Made Authorities Backpedal

Belarusians are fighting for their values and their future.

The campaign "For Freedom of Peaceful Assembly" has elaborated a petition on the service Zvarot.by, which indicates the need to amend the existing Law "On Mass Events".

The authors of the petition are sure that peaceful assemblies are one of the best tools for solving social problems:

"The right to freedom of peaceful assembly is included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is included in the Constitution of the Republic of Belarus with a small addition that the procedure for organizing and holding such meetings is determined by the law. Everything would be okay, but the acting Law restricts this right too much, introduces so many strange procedures that it is not always possible to pass them for the conditional society of butterfly lovers, and even if we complete these procedures, each (the / -th) of us may have problems in the form of detentions, fines and even administrative arrest, " - the drafters of the petition said.

The struggle against the launch of the battery plant in Brest, the battle for the preservation of the environment in Svetlahorsk, mass protests against Lukashenka's absurd decree "On social dependency" - even in the harsh conditions of the current law, people are still fighting for their values and their future. What came out of the "decree on parasitism" is known to everyone - the authorities were frightened of people and backpedalled. However, in return, they drafted hundreds of administrative protocols. To prevent this, a new law "On Mass Events" is needed.

In the petition, it is required to take into account the opinion on the right to free peaceful assemblies of the representatives of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the "Viasna" Human Rights Center, the Office for Rights of People with Disabilities, the Belarusian Association of Journalists, the NGO Ecodom and the Council of Europe expert Aliaksandr Vashkevich.