Candidate for Deputy Dismissed :: Charter'97 :: News

An activist of the Young Front Aleh Korban has been fired. The young activist worked as a polisher at Minsk gears plant. He believes that dismissal is a witch-hunt for his oppositional activities. The activist is registered as a candidate for deputy of Minsk city council in constituency No.23.

Since today Aleh Korban is considered unemployed. He told to Radio Svaboda that in the end of the year he went to the Personnel Department of the plant an asked to give him a two-week leave for campaigning. Aleh referred to the fact that he was a candidate in local elections.

“A foreman and a shop manager signed all necessary documents and sent me to the head of the personnel department Fedarovich. He invited persons responsible for ideology work and others. They told me that they won’t sign my document and as employers they have a right not to give me a leave. About three hours have passed. And later I was told it could be called absence from work, and I can be dismissed. Then I told that I am going to write a letter of resignation from my position due to a desire to terminate my employment,” Aleh Korban said.

The foreman at the plant agreed to give Aleh a possibility for employee’s resignation.

“I do not want to be dismissed for violation of an article, as it is rather difficult to find a job then. A deputy director on ideology work was indignant that I had been registered as a candidate for a deputy. He started to express his views. He told that the republic of Belarus emerged thanks to Lenin, and that everything that we are doing is wrong. I believe that I had been dismissed on political grounds, primarily for my oppositional activities,” Korban believes.

Aleh Korban told that dismissal wouldn’t change his decision to run in the election.