Journalist Acquitted of Unsanctioned Picketing

The protest action against build­ing of an office cen­ter in Kura­p­aty, the place of mass bur­ial since Stal­in times, end­ed with a small vic­to­ry: the devel­op­er stopped the con­struc­tion and the builders’ units with­drew. How­ev­er, the activists who camped near the site for over a week, are now being charged with arti­cle 23.34 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code (vio­lat­ing the pro­ce­dure of orga­niz­ing or hold­ing a mass event).

“Eight men are being tried in one case with alike charges: “a group of cit­i­zens active­ly pick­et­ed, ham­pered con­struc­tion, expressed their dis­agree­ment, hanged out white-red-white flags, broke the fence (of the con­struc­tion site), threw them­selves under the trucks and did not react to police’s demand”, says Dziana Ser­adz­iuk.

In the journalist’s case three wit­ness­es – work­ers of the con­struc­tion com­pa­ny – tes­ti­fied that the reports did not cor­re­spond to what they had told at the pre-tri­al stage. One of the work­ers con­firmed that he had seen Dziana Ser­adz­iuk at the venue, but did not know what she had been doing there. The sec­ond work­er said that the police­men had read out a ready-made report and asked him to sign it. But now the report has dis­crep­an­cy with what he had told. In par­tic­u­lar, he had not seen the jour­nal­ist in Kura­p­aty and does not know what she had been doing there. He also said he had not been shown any pho­tos to rec­og­nize the jour­nal­ist, as the police report indi­cat­ed.

The jour­nal­ist said that she had seen the police report only on the day of the tri­al, and nev­er before, although report said that she had refused to sign it.

“I was ready for any­thing at the back­ground of all the awful today’s sen­tences to pro­test­ers in Min­sk. And I am pleased that the judge accept­ed the video which we pre­sent­ed as a proof of our inno­cence. The judge han­dled the case objec­tive­ly. Also, I am very hap­py that the wit­ness­es claimed about fal­si­fi­ca­tion of the police reports,” said Dziana after the tri­al.