Activist of For Freedom Movement Fined for Distribution of Leaflets

Ali­ak­san­dr Men­dal was detained on Octo­ber 12 when he was putting the leaflets in mail­box­es of res­i­dents of 108 con­stituen­cy where Yuras Hubare­vich, a leader of the For Free­dom Move­ment had stood as a can­di­date for par­lia­ment. The leaflets report­ed on facts of fal­si­fi­ca­tion of the elec­tion results. 1640 copies of the leaflets were con­fis­cat­ed from the activist.

Dur­ing the tri­al, Ali­ak­san­dr Men­dal admit­ted the fact that he had been dis­trib­ut­ing the leaflets, but he dis­agreed that he was liable to media law. His lawyer under­lined that the leaflets had no peri­od­ic­i­ty and were not reg­is­tered as a mass medi­um. The judge, how­ev­er, fined him for 40 basic amounts accord­ing to admin­is­tra­tive arti­cle 22.9 (vio­lat­ing the pro­ce­dure of dis­trib­ut­ing mass media prod­ucts).

Yuras Hubare­vich com­ment­ed that “the absur­di­ty of the case was obvi­ous”. “After a short peri­od of thaw dur­ing the par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, the author­i­ties start­ed to press again. Fines are hand­ed down for every­thing: for going out to streets, for col­lec­tions of sig­na­tures, for dis­tri­b­u­tion of leaflets. They press on new activists in the first place.”

After the tri­al, Yuras Hubare­vich hand­ed out sev­er­al dozen of the leaflets him­self on leav­ing the court, “to demon­strate that they will not ban with the fines to report the truth to peo­ple”.