Supreme Court Ignores UN Conclusions :: Charter'97 :: News

Five years ago a human rights activist from Brest Uladzimir Vyalichkin addressed the UN Human Rights Committee with a complaint for being arrested in 2000. He spent a night in a police department and was fined 20 basic units for handing out in the street texts of the Universal Human Rights Declaration. In November 2005 Uladzimir Vyalichkin received an answer for his address. The Human Rights Committee reached a conclusion that these facts demonstrate violation of the Article 19-2 of the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights, and Belarus must compensate losses for Uladzimir Vyalichkin.

Having received an answer from the UN, in his petition addressed to the Chairman of the Supreme Court, Uladzimir Vyalichkin asked to reverse the verdict of the court of Lenin district of Brest of January 15, 2001. As a result, he got an answer of the deputy chairman of the Supreme Court V. Kalinkovich, which run contrary to conclusions of the UN Human Rights Committee and is ambiguous: “This petition is not satisfied as according to the Article 167 Part 1 of the Administrative Code you [Vyalichkin] have been brought to responsibility reasonably, in line with national legislation in force for the time of your offence”.