Legambiente Solidarieta, an Italian charity, delivered a Daily Iveco mobile laboratory for diagnosis of thyroid disorders to the district medical
center in Luninets, Brest region, on June 19, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Valentina Sergiyevich told BelaPAN. According to Ms. Sergiyevich, Belarusian doctors will own the laboratory after they have reported to the Italian donor on the results of three-year research.
The mobile laboratory, intended for examining the Luninets district's Chernobyl-affected population in their places of residence, has an ultrasound unit, computers and other advanced equipment for thyroid cancer diagnosis, and its personnel have completed training courses in Italy, said Ms. Sergiyevich.
Children, who number 20,000 of the district's 80,000 population, will be examined first, she noted. Since 1994, Legambiente Solidarieta has arranged for the recuperation of more than 20,000 children from Belarus,
Russia and Ukraine in Italy. As many as 1,200 children are to go to Italy for vacations between June and September this year.
The Brest city government has announced that it will impose a 5-percent tax on tour operators, beauty saloons, billiard, bowling and computer clubs, hair styling saloons and the providers of some other services. The tax will be collected from proceeds and will not be
included in the price of services. The city authorities collect about 20 local taxes at present.
A district court in Brest has ruled in favor of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party "Narodnaya Hramada" in its suit against a deputy head of the city government.
The court found that Mikhail Kuish, deputy chairman of the Brest City Executive Committee, had illegally barred Narodnaya Hramada from staging a rally in Brest on March 28.
Mr. Kuish has been ordered to cover the suit-related expenses of 50,000 rubels ($28). Mr. Kuish denied permission for the rally saying that the city government had already sanctioned a trade union rally
at the same venue, the stadium Stroitel. He also said that there is no room at the stadium for more than 3,000 people (the number of participants mentioned in Narodnaya Hramada's application).
During the hearing the judge found out that the stadium has a capacity of 5,200 people. Narodnaya Hramada filed its application a day earlier than the Brest Regional Trade Union Association (BRTUA). The city government rejected Narodnaya Hramada's application two days before it granted permission to the BRTUA. The defendant's representative in court cited other reasons for banning the rally than stated in the city government's official reply to Narodnaya Hramada, in particular
"people's safety and incompatibility of the purposes of the rallies."
The defendant's representative told the judge that the city authorities "act within the rigorous framework of the administrative vertical [the executive] ... receiving verbal information from the regional executive committee." Narodnaya Hramada has won its second suit against the city authorities' bans on its rallies, Igor Maslovsky, chairman
of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC) in the Brest region, told BelaPAN. "We regard the Brest City Executive Committee's actions as a violation of constitutional rights, of the country's laws, of Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of Article 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights." Mr. Maslovsky said that the BHC was going to invite the Brest authorities to a round-table discussion aimed at preventing such incidents from occurring in the future and establishing constructive cooperation.
The Brest regional subsidiary of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee (BHC) has asked the regional Executive Committee and Soviet (elected council) for information on the Soviet's activities and expenditures.
The BHC said that it will publish any reply from the authorities in the media and appealed to residents in other regions to make similar inquiries.
The region's residents have no access to information on the activities of the Brest Regional Soviet because voters and non-state media journalists are not admitted to its sessions, Igor Maslovsky, chairman of BHC branch, told BelaPAN.
The BHC subsidiary has asked for information on the borders of the electoral districts, and the Soviet's composition, budgeted and actual expenditures. The BHC also requested reports from particular members on what they have done to carry out their election campaign pledges.
The Belarusian Social Democratic Party Narodnaya Hramada has announced a demonstration in Brest against wage delays in the public
sector and the introduction of fees in education and health care.
The Social Democrats plan to demonstrate on June 28 at Brest's soccer stadium, Stroitel. "We feel greatly ashamed of our government, which proclaims free education while forcing schools to look for funds on their own. Schools must teach children, not make money," Narodnaya Hramada said in a special statement.
The local branches of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the Belarusian Free Trade Union, and Maladaya Hramada, a Social Democratic youth organization, are expected to join the demonstration.
Farmers of the Pribuzhye collective farm in the Brest district at a recent general meeting voted to dismiss the farm's chief manager, Vladimir Saiko, to evict him from his cottage and to transform Pribuzhye into a
joint-stock company.
The farmers accused Mr. Saiko of financial abuses and of illegally occupying the cottage, which, they said, had been built at the farm's expense.
The Brest district police office brought embezzlement charges against Mr. Saiko this spring after the farmers complained to the Belarusian leader's administration that Mr. Saiko was abusing his position and was often missing from work for a long time. District authorities allowed the farmers to hold the general meeting in Mr. Saiko's absence. The general meeting elected Aleksandr Salapura, the former chief agronomist, to manage the farm. In March, the workers of the Belarus collective farm in the Brest district forced chief manager Spiridon Podshibyakin to resign, accusing him of profiteering at the farm's expense. Podshibyakin was arrested later and charged with stealing meat from the farm.
Aleksandr Shpilevsky, chairman of Belarus' State Customs Committee (SCC), and his Russian counterpart, Mikhail Vanin, will cochair a June 17 meeting of the Board of the Customs Committee of Belarus and Russia.
The Board will meet in Brest to discuss the results of last year's joint
operations, preventive and other measures to be taken this year, procedures for exchanging information about customs violations in Belarus and Russia, as well as training courses for Belarusians at the Russian Customs Academy, SCC press secretary Yelena Khalikova told BelaPAN.
On the same day, Brest will host the 16th meeting of the Council of Customs Chiefs of the Eurasian Economic Community (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan). The agenda includes measures to harmonize collection procedures for customs dues and taxes, automated information exchange, and the member states' progress in adopting new Customs Codes, the press secretary said.
The Brest Regional Court has overturned an opposition activist's conviction for participating in the last year's "chain of concerned people" formed to attract public attention to the unaccounted for disappearances of opponents of Belarusian ruler Aleksandr Lukashenko.
A district court had found Polina Panasyuk guilty of disobeying police officers' legal demands and violating regulations regarding mass demonstrations, the opposition youth group Zubr told BelaPAN.
The Brest Regional Court said Ms Panasyuk had been charged unlawfully because the image of former Interior Minister Yury Zakharenko, which she was holding in her hands, "did not express sociopolitical, group or private interests or a protest, but asserted the fact" of the politician's disappearance.
Officers of the Brest Border Control Unit seized an internationally wanted Georgian man while checking a passenger train en route from Moscow to Warsaw, the State Border Troops Committee's press office told BelaPAN.
The man produced a passport of a Russian Federation citizen that had the photo replaced and part of the stamp forged. An investigation established that the offender was a fugitive criminal internationally wanted for three years. He reportedly escaped from a Georgian detention center in May 1999.
A court in Brest imposed a fine of 100,000 rubels on the Georgian for the attempted illegal border crossing. His case has been forwarded to the police, which will decide on his extradition, the press office said.
A car fell off a bridge in Pinsk, Brest region, on June 11, killing the driver and seriously injuring two passengers, the press office of the Brest
regional government's Department of Internal Affairs told BelaPAN.
A company of young people was trying to drive across the no-railing pedestrian bridge over a channel to the beach near the River Pina, when their car moved off the path and fell down from a height of two meters onto the channel bank. The driver, 19, was killed, and a 20-year-old medical student and a 21-year-old technical school trainer, who
were accompanying him, were hospitalized with internal organ injuries.
Police say that the three were intoxicated when the accident happened.
26 June 2002