Valery Schukin Addresses Justice Minister for Forth Time :: Charter'97 :: News

A well-known journalist and human rights activist Valery Schukin has addressed Belarusian Justice Minister Viktar Halavanau with a complaint concerning gross violation of law by judge of Maskouski district of Minsk Alyaksei Rybakou. That judge had delivered a verdict to the former candidate for presidency Alyaksandr Kazulin.

The human rights activist wants to take an appeal from the actions of judge Rybakou on July 7 and July 14, 2006. Judge Rybakou cleared the court room from all present before reading the verdict.

“To put a journalist out of the court, judge should have declared it a closed court first, and then clear the court from persons who are not participants of the process. But Judge Rybakou expelled journalist Schukin out of the court room without declaring a closed court session. A judge can order to put out of the court persons who are not participants of the trial basing on the Article 307 Part 3 of the Code of Penal Procedure, but only in case those persons violate the order of the trial. Journalist Schukin had not been hindering the trail. It means that driving me out of the court room is not lawful. And Judge Rybakou has done so twine, on July 7 and 14, which means he had violated the law twice,” the complaint reads.

The journalist reminds that his previous complaints addressed to the minister, of 7, 13, 16 July 2006, were forwarded to the Justice department of Minsk city executive committee. As said by Schukin, the head of the department hadn’t looked into the violations case. On July 21 Schukin was sent a run-around saying that according to the Article 22 of the Code of Penal Procedure, judges are independent and are act upon the law only. Any interference in the work of judges is unacceptable and entails legal accountability. The justice department allegedly does not have an authority to interfere with the judge’s conduct of the proceedings.