The ‘Barysauskiya naviny’ Editor-in-chief Fined for Publishing Information about ‘The Angry Belarusians’ Rally’

The tri­al was based on a police report, filed by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Barysau Dis­trict Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs, accus­ing the ‘Barysauskiya naviny’ newspaper’s Edi­tor-in-chief of pub­lish­ing an arti­cle ‘The Angry Peo­ple will Come out to the Square’ (#40 (1324) on Octo­ber 4, 2017 with infor­ma­tion about the upcom­ing civ­il protest action, planned to be arranged by the Belaru­sian Nation­al Con­gress in Min­sk on Octo­ber 21st.

On Novem­ber 20, 2017, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus issued an offi­cial warn­ing in the writ­ten form to the news­pa­per edi­to­r­i­al, accus­ing the media out­let of break­ing arti­cle 38 of Belarus law ‘On Mass Media’ (‘Dis­tri­b­u­tion of banned infor­ma­tion in mass media’).

On Novem­ber 28, 2017, the Edi­tor-in-chief Ana­tol Bukas was sum­moned to the Barysau Dis­trict Depart­ment of Inter­nal Affairs to pro­vide expla­na­tions on the case of admin­is­tra­tive offense, which was ground­ed on the writ­ten warn­ing, issued by the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus. The police report on the admin­is­tra­tive offense was hand­ed over to Ana­tol Bukas on the fol­low­ing day of Novem­ber 29, 2017.

Ana­tol Bukas didn’t admit his guilt dur­ing the tri­al. He con­sid­ered the pre­sent­ed charges, based on arti­cle 23.34, part 1 of Belarus Code on Admin­is­tra­tive Offens­es, with sanc­tions for par­tic­i­pants of mass events, to be irrel­e­vant. Nev­er­the­less, the judge of Barysau Dis­trict Court Yauhien Manyshau con­sid­ered the Editor’s‑in-Chief guilt to be proved and fined him 15 base amounts. The ‘Barysauskiya Naviny’ Edi­tor-in-Chief is plan­ning to appeal the ver­dict in the region­al court.