Three Days Arrest for the Photo in Vitebsk

The res­i­dent of Viteb­sk, Piotr Berlin­au was detained from last Fri­day till Mon­day so that he would not attempt to escape from the court hear­ing.

“I turned out in the place by chance – I had a meet­ing near­by. I rec­og­nized sev­er­al jour­nal­ists who had writ­ten about me and my prob­lem – evic­tion from my land lot, tak­en away from me for the needs of the state,” says Piotr Berlin­au. “I demand com­pen­sa­tion, appeal to dif­fer­ent instances, to courts, so I would want infor­ma­tion­al sup­port. When I saw the jour­nal­ists being pho­tographed, whom I knew, I decid­ed to join. The idea was beau­ti­ful – birds in the hands, all decent peo­ple.

“I turned out to be in place by chance – I had a meet­ing near­by. I rec­og­nized a cou­ple of jour­nal­ists who had writ­ten about me and my trou­ble – I had been evict­ed from my land lot tak­en away from me for the needs of the state,” says Piotr Berlin­au. I demand com­pen­sa­tion, appeal to dif­fer­ent instances, to court, so I would want infor­ma­tion­al sup­port. When I saw some jour­nal­ists whom I know being pho­tographed, I decid­ed to join. The idea was beau­ti­ful – birds in the hands, all decent peo­ple. I did not have a slight­est idea that we would be accused of a vio­la­tion for that!”

Piotr Berlin­au was detained in the street on Novem­ber 28 under charges of tak­ing part in an unsanc­tioned pick­et. He refused out of prin­ci­ple to move to the flat he had got instead of his land lot, so the author­i­ties argued it was dif­fi­cult to find him and that is why he was detained pend­ing tri­al.

He thinks the deci­sion is unjust because he did not intend to “express” any­thing at an “unsanc­tioned pick­et”, he just want­ed to share con­tacts with jour­nal­ists and sup­port the idea to take a pho­to at the back­ground of a city view.

We remind that the pho­to ses­sion in Viteb­sk was held before Novem­ber 5 and was pub­lished on Face­book page ded­i­cat­ed to the city and on sev­er­al web­sites; the pho­to was men­tioned in the con­text of the Stand up for Jour­nal­ism cam­paign held by BAJ, with the ini­tia­tive of the EFJ. The peo­ple in the pho­to have been charged with par­tic­i­pa­tion in an unsanc­tioned pick­et (art. 23.34 of the Admin­is­tra­tive Code); five jour­nal­ists have been fined. The pho­to has already gained the fame of the most expen­sive pho­to in the his­to­ry of Belaru­sian jus­tice, the total sum of fines by now accounts to 15,450,000 rubles (around 1,150 euro) plus three days arrest. One more per­son is expect­ing to receive a court sum­mons.