Belsat Cameraman Fined for «Cursing» at the Police

Ales Liu­bianchuk was charged with art. 17.1 (minor hooli­gan­ism). Two police offi­cers accused him of curs­ing at them at the police depart­ment. The reporter strong­ly dis­agrees with the charges and with the court deci­sion.

On March 31, Ales Liu­bianchuk, an accred­it­ed cam­era­man of TVP (Poland), was detained at the office of Bel­sat when the police came to search the office of Bel­sat in Min­sk in rela­tion with the dis­pute over Bel­sat trade mark. The cam­era­man was involved as a wit­ness and was tak­en to the police depart­ment to give tes­ti­mo­ny. He spent almost all day long with the police offi­cers Padrez and Hryb.

On the first day of the tri­al, only the jour­nal­ist gave tes­ti­mo­ny, as the police offi­cers did not appear in court. The reporter under­lined that he had request­ed for a lawyer sev­er­al times, which was denied to him at that moment. In the evening, the two police offi­cers charged him with minor hooli­gan­ism, art. 17.1. The reporter was sup­posed to spend that week­end at the deten­tion facil­i­ty, but was sud­den­ly released on the evening of March 31.

The reporter said that he was accused “because offi­cer Padrez did not hear from me what he want­ed to hear in the case on Bel­sat trade mark. He insist­ed on me sign­ing the report of ques­tion­ing with which I dis­agreed.”

Today, the police­men con­firmed their tes­ti­monies in court. They both said that Liu­bianchuk behaved uneasy and cursed at the police depart­ment. To many ques­tions, the police­men replied that they did not remem­ber the details of the day, because they dealt with such inci­dents reg­u­lar­ly.

The charge of minor hooli­gan­ism is typ­i­cal for penal­iz­ing jour­nal­ists and pub­lic activists. In March, at least sev­en jour­nal­ists were charged with speak­ing foul lan­guage in pub­lic, which falls under minor hooli­gan­ism arti­cle 17.1. Among them Ali­ak­san­dr Barazen­ka who served a 15 days’ term alleged­ly for curs­ing; the audio of deten­tion showed quite the oppo­site – he did speak any­thing but that he was a jour­nal­ist. But even the audio did not help.