What has official propaganda kept silent about? :: Charter'97 :: News

Today the Belarusian official mass media distributed information about the UNO Committee on human rights publishing its conclusion on a number of private individuals’ claims. Particularly, the BelTA agency reported “In the claims of citizens in which the governments of Belarus and Canada has been involved the UNO Committee on human rights has not discovered evidences of any violations”. Who from Belarus claimed and of what the official agency does not inform. The situation has been cleared up in the interview of the spokesman for the Belarusian Helsinki Committee Zmitser Markusheusky in his interview with the Charter’ 97 press-center

As the human rights’ activist reported to the Charter’ 97 press-center, the claim was lodged by the Belarusian citizen Maksim Gavrilin in 2005.He was charged of the criminal offence. When introducing the amendments to the Criminal Code the sanction for the crime committed by Gavrilin was reduced. He considered that after the amendments being introduced his sentence should have been reconsidered and his term in prison been proportionally reduced. But his term remained within the framework of the sanctions stipulated by the former Criminal Code.

The Belarusian applied to the courts of Belarus but in vain that is why he lodged the claim to the UNO Committee on human rights which made the conclusion that Gavrilin’s crime was publicly dangerous and when taking into consideration a number of aggravating circumstances (that person was previously sued) his claim was to be disclaimed.

“In our opinion if the criminal case is reconsidered and the responsibility is reduced than the case has to be reconsidered and the term to be reduced proportionally to the changed extent of sanctions. That is, if the maximum term in compliance with a particular sanction was 5 years and the person was sentences to 3 years than after the maximum sanction being reduced to three years the person’s term should have been proportionally reduced to two years”, Zmitser Markusheusky commented on the resolution of the Committee.

As far as the general opinion of the UNO Committee on human rights regarding the claims from Belarus is concerned, presently the Committee had considered 15 claims and came to the conclusion that in 14 of them the human rights were violated by the state .And only in one of them the violations have not been approved.

This fact was certainly not mentioned by the BelTA.

As far as the opinion of the UNO Committee on observation of civil and political rights in Belarus is concerned, on the basis of information received from the country the Committee many times mentioned that in Belarus the civil and political rights were violated .The official Minsk is to submit periodical reports to the Committee but since 2001 it has not been fulfilling its obligation. The situation with human rights in Belarus can be judged by the reports of former special reporter of the UNO Adrian Severin as well as of the non-governmental organizations.