23 June 2002
Narodnaya Hramada wins suit against Brest government

 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.