City Court Upheld Verdict to Iryna Khalip :: Charter'97 :: News

Today Minsk city court upheld the decision of October district court of Minsk in the suit of US citizen Arkadiy Mar, the deputy editor-in-chief of the “Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta” (BDG) Irina Khalip (Iryna Khalip) and publisher of the newspaper, a private unitary enterprise “Marat”. On April 11 the journalist and publishing firm have been found guilty of insulting honour and dignity of the plaintiff. Iryna Khalip was to pay compensation to Arkadiy Mar amounting to 10 million rubles (more than 4,500 USD), and the private unitary enterprise “Marat” was to pay 50 million rubles (about 23,000 USD). The plaintiff, as we have informed, asked a compensation of 1 million USD. Arkadiy Mar also demanded the reporter to refute some statements in her article “Oklahoma Would Never Learn About Lukashenka”.

Emotional expressions of the journalist were caused by a scandal started after Arkadiy Mar had interviewed Alyaksandr Lukashenka. The interview was quoted many times by the state Belarusian press. After that the state press announced that the American newspaper is ready to publish an interview with Lukashenka at 12 pages. At last, the “Russkaya Amerika” allegedly named Lukashenka the “Best Politician of the Year”. However, after several days a letter of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper “Russkaya Amerika” Valery Tarasov was received by a number of Belarusian newspapers. The journalist from the American state of Oklahoma told that his newspaper had never interviewed Lukashenka, and certainly had never named the European outcast the best politician of the year.

The official propaganda was excusing itself afterwards that Arkadiy Mar is an editor-in-chief of “another” “Russkaya Amerika” from the state of New York. It has turned out that that newspaper is issued two times a year, and every issue is dedicated to one of the authoritarian leaders of Asian republics.

Meanwhile the Charter’97 has found out that Arkadiy Mar is going to continue his litigation campaign against mass media outlets, and now in America. The newspaper “Our Canada” has published an “Epilogue” informing that Arkadiy Mar is going to sue this newspaper. The motive is the publication of the interview with Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip in the “Our Canada”. In particular, Irina Khalip told about the suit against her and the “Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta” newspaper initiated by Arkadiy Mar.

“Several days ago we published an interview with Belarusian journalist Irina Khalip, where Arkadiy Mar was mentioned in several sentences. We called him “some children writer” and told that nobody knows about his newspaper “Russkaya Amerika” in New York”.

Arkadiy Mar sent a number of copies of his newspaper and a book for children and a copy of diploma for popularizing Russian literature among Russian and Kyrgyz readers.

“What may be said in our defence is that that we do not have a lawyer. But we have a talk with our psychiatrist instead. He insistently recommended us to offer our apologies to Mr.Mar, and we are following his advice”.