Instead of Uzkorak BelaPAN will go on trial

The trial on BelaPAN’s case has been scheduled on 27 March.

On 10 March in the court of Horki district, Mahilou region, the consideration of the lawsuit has started of the chairwoman of Horki district organization of Belarusian Association of the Hadicapped Tamara Kaltunova against the newspaper Uzhorak and its editor-in-chief Halina Budnaja. Tamara Kaltunova accused the newspaper of slander and demanded to charge her with the amount of 50 million roubles. The case was considered in Horki district court by the judge Viktor Jaskievich, the defendant was represented by a lawyer of the Belarusian Association of Journalists Aleh Ahiejeu, the human rights center Viasna reports.

The proceeding started at 11 a.m. At the beginning of the trial the defendants on the case were the newspaper’s editor-in-chief Halina Budnaja and a private company Uzhorak that publishes the newspaper.

The judge Viktor Jaskievich took the case with attention. The court concluded that the information, published in the newspaper, came to Uzhorak from the BelaPAN news agency, that is why Halina Budnaja was not the right defendant on the case. The court ruled that the new defendant on Tamara Kaltunova’s lawsuit will be the BelaPAN agency. Horki district court will sent the relevant materials to BelaPAN.

The next session of Horki district court is scheduled for 27 March 2014, 11 a.m.

In her lawsuit Tamara Kaltunova demanded to charge the Uzhorak newspaper with 50 million roubles as a compensation of moral damage and publish refutation of the materials the newspaper published.

The reason for the lawsuit was the article, published in the Uzhorak last year, in which the trial was described of the members of the Association’s members and the chairman of the Horki affiliate Tamara Kaltunova.

According to Uzhorak’s editor-in-chief Halina Budnaja, all the articles in the newspaper were taken from the newsfeed of the BelaPAN news agency with a respective reference to it. The Uzhorak newspaper did not published any materials of their own on the conflict in Horki district Association of the Handicapped.