Little victory of “Narodnaya Volya”

The court removed several tendentious expressions from the suit of the Information Ministry.

On June 2 another court trial of “Narodnaya Volya” took place. The newspaper challenged the “decision” of the Supreme Economic Court issued on April 27 to note a claim of the Information Ministry concerning shutting down the newspaper, Baj.by informs.

As a result, the court eliminated several tendentious phrases from the text, however the court is still to entertain the action against the newspaper.

“We have studied this “decision” of the deputy chairman of the Supreme Economic Court Mr Yahorau and saw their phrases which put in question objectivity and fairness of the future decisions in our case,” said the representative of the newspaper in the court, deputy chairman of the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Harry Pahanyajla to the BAJ press-service.

In particular, the document wrote about systematic violations of the law by the newspaper, and that further issuing of the newspaper could “undermine state and public interests.”

“Narodnaya Volya” has taken an appeal from the decision under cassational procedure, insisting that it must be revoked, and the case forwarded to the Economic Court of Minsk.

Today the SEC panel agreed with the statement that some phrases are inappropriate, and eliminated them from the document; however the “decision” has been upheld. However, Pahanyajla believes it is “a little victory” – according to him, the panel of the Supreme Economic Court has in fact admitted that some judges have a biased approach.