Belarusian Officials Do Not Understand Belarusian? :: Charter'97 :: News

Today in the court of Maskouski district of Brest a complaint of a public activist Andrei Sharenda concerning illegal punishment by an Administrative Commission of Maskouski district of Brest was considered. As we have informed, on July 26 A. Sharenda and several activists were handing out informational leaflets about a meeting before an authorized meeting, which was later banned in the last minute. The activists were detained and fined from 30,000 to 100,000 BYR, as leaflets allegedly “contained information aimed at damaging state and public order”.

During the court proceedings A. Sharenda asked to conduct the case in Belarusian. After a 15-minute talk judge agreed, while a representative of the Administrative commission L.Malevich told that in case Judge and A. Sharenda would talk in Belarusian, she wouldn’t understand and wouldn’t be able to represent interests of the commission.

The court started to look for an interpreter for Ms. Malevich (though she said that she had been learning the language and even read Karatkevich). As it turned out, an interpreter for L.Malevich would be available only in a month.