HRDs insist on immediate release of all activists charged under Article 342 of the Criminal Code

Min­sk — June 9, 2020

On May 29, dur­ing a pick­et held in Hrod­na to col­lect sig­na­tures in sup­port of the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion of Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya, police detained the head of her nom­i­na­tion group, blog­ger known for a pop­u­lar YouTube chan­nel “Coun­try for Liv­ing” Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki and at least 15 oth­er peo­ple who took part in the pick­et.

On June 9, sev­en par­tic­i­pants, Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki, Dzmit­ry Fur­manau, Viarhili Ushak, Ali­ak­san­dr Ara­novich, Vasil Babrous­ki, Art­siom Sakau, and Uladz­imir Navu­mik, were charged with orga­niz­ing group actions that gross­ly vio­lat­ed pub­lic order and dis­re­spect­ed the law­ful demands of the author­i­ties, and with active par­tic­i­pa­tion in such actions (Part 1 of Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code). Two of the detainees are also being pros­e­cut­ed for vio­lence against police offi­cers.

We note that the pro­ce­dure for col­lect­ing sig­na­tures by mem­bers of nom­i­na­tion groups is estab­lished by Arti­cle 61 of the Elec­toral Code: “Col­lec­tion of vot­ers’ sig­na­tures can be car­ried out in the form of pick­et­ing. Obtain­ing a per­mit to hold a pick­et for these pur­pos­es is not required if it is held in places not pro­hib­it­ed by local exec­u­tive and admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies.” The con­cept of pick­et­ing is not con­tained in the elec­toral law, so it is defined in accor­dance with the Law “On Mass Events in Belarus”: pick­et­ing is pub­lic expres­sion by a cit­i­zen or a group of cit­i­zens of their socio-polit­i­cal, col­lec­tive or per­son­al and oth­er inter­ests or protest (with­out a pro­ces­sion), includ­ing by hunger strike, on any issues with or with­out the use of posters, ban­ners and oth­er means. The same applies to the joint mass pres­ence of cit­i­zens in a pre­de­ter­mined pub­lic place (includ­ing in the open air) at a cer­tain time to per­form a pre­de­ter­mined action orga­nized (includ­ing online or through oth­er infor­ma­tion net­works) for the pub­lic expres­sion of their socio-polit­i­cal inter­ests or protest.

The elec­toral leg­is­la­tion does not con­tain any restric­tions on the num­ber of par­tic­i­pants, top­ics or forms of expres­sion. Arti­cle 61 of the Elec­toral Code and the CEC Res­o­lu­tion No. 14 “On clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the appli­ca­tion of the pro­vi­sions of the Elec­toral Code of the Repub­lic of Belarus on the pro­ce­dure for the nom­i­na­tion of can­di­dates for Pres­i­dent of the Repub­lic of Belarus in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion” set addi­tion­al require­ments and restric­tions on pick­ets held to col­lect sig­na­tures. The pick­eters have the right to dis­play infor­ma­tion mate­ri­als with bio­graph­i­cal data of per­sons in sup­port of whom sig­na­tures are col­lect­ed; these infor­ma­tion mate­ri­als, as well as oth­er print­ed mate­ri­als, how­ev­er, should not be giv­en to vot­ers. In addi­tion, dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, mem­bers of nom­i­na­tion groups should fol­low the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Min­istry of Health on the pre­ven­tion of the coro­n­avirus infec­tion (use face masks, hand san­i­tiz­ers, etc.).

Any oth­er restric­tions on hold­ing peace­ful pick­ets are unac­cept­able both in terms of nation­al law and in accor­dance with Belarus’s inter­na­tion­al oblig­a­tions.

Thus, the pick­et orga­nized by the nom­i­na­tion group of Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya was peace­ful, as it did not dis­turb pub­lic order, and met both the require­ments of nation­al law and the stan­dards of peace­ful assem­blies.

Arti­cle 21 of the Inter­na­tion­al Covenant on Civ­il and Polit­i­cal Rights rec­og­nizes the right to peace­ful assem­bly. Under Arti­cle 19 of the Covenant states that every­one has the right to free­dom of opin­ion and expres­sion. Every­one has the right to free­dom of expres­sion; this right includes free­dom to seek, receive and impart infor­ma­tion and ideas of all kinds, regard­less of fron­tiers, either oral­ly, in writ­ing or in print, in the form of art, or through any oth­er media of their choice.

The exer­cise of these rights is not sub­ject to any restric­tions oth­er than those imposed by law and nec­es­sary in a demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety in the inter­ests of state or pub­lic secu­ri­ty, pub­lic order, pub­lic health and morals, or the pro­tec­tion of the rights, free­doms and rep­u­ta­tions of oth­ers.

There were no grounds for apply­ing legal restric­tions on these rights and free­doms to the pick­eters in Hrod­na. The par­tic­i­pants in the pick­et were detained after a clear­ly ille­gal inter­fer­ence of police offi­cers in com­mu­ni­ca­tion between vot­ers and the head of the nom­i­na­tion group Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki.

The events that pre­ced­ed the arrests, includ­ing state­ments by the incum­bent Pres­i­dent Lukashen­ka tar­get­ing Tsikhanous­ki, an attempt to dis­rupt the pick­et by sev­er­al women, ille­gal inter­ven­tion and Tsikhanouski’s arrest by police, the appar­ent­ly pre­arranged fall of a police offi­cer and a sub­se­quent reac­tion to the inci­dent by gov­ern­ment-con­trolled media, allow us to con­clude that a provo­ca­tion could have been com­mit­ted against Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki and oth­er mem­bers of Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s nom­i­na­tion group.

The analy­sis of video footage of the events and tes­ti­monies by eye­wit­ness allows us to con­clude that there were no legal grounds to detain Tsikhanous­ki under the Code of Crim­i­nal Pro­ce­dure, which tes­ti­fies to the arbi­trary and ille­gal deten­tion of Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki, and there­fore the charges of vio­lence against police offi­cers should be approached crit­i­cal­ly.

All the above facts allow us to con­clude that the author­i­ties have a polit­i­cal motive in per­se­cut­ing mem­bers of Svi­at­lana Tsikhanouskaya’s nom­i­na­tion group, aimed at under­min­ing their pub­lic activ­i­ties, as well as cre­at­ing obsta­cles to Tsikhanouskaya’s pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion.

Accord­ing to para­graph 3.1 of the Guide­lines on the Def­i­n­i­tion of a Polit­i­cal Pris­on­er, which were approved by the Belaru­sian human rights com­mu­ni­ty at the 3rd Human Rights Forum, impris­on­ment of a per­son in con­nec­tion with their non-vio­lent exer­cise of free­doms guar­an­teed by inter­na­tion­al human rights law is grounds for rec­og­niz­ing such a per­son as a polit­i­cal per­son. Such a per­son should, there­fore, be imme­di­ate­ly released.

This allows us to state that the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki, Dzmit­ry Fur­manau, Viarhili Ushak, Ali­ak­san­dr Ara­novich, Vasil Babrous­ki, Art­siom Sakau, and Uladz­imir Navu­mik is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed, and the above per­sons are polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.

In this regard, we, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Belaru­sian human rights orga­ni­za­tions, call on the Belaru­sian author­i­ties to:

imme­di­ate­ly release Siarhei Tsikhanous­ki, Dzmit­ry Fur­manau, Viarhili Ushak, Ali­ak­san­dr Ara­novich, Vasil Babrous­ki, Art­siom Sakau, and Uladz­imir Navu­mik and drop the crim­i­nal charges brought against them under Arti­cle 342 of the Crim­i­nal Code;

orga­nize an unbi­ased and inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the actions of police offi­cers and those pick­eters who vio­lat­ed the law and the rights of oth­er cit­i­zens, pro­vid­ing them with all crim­i­nal pro­ce­dur­al guar­an­tees.

Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na»

Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee

Legal Ini­tia­tive

Belaru­sian Doc­u­men­ta­tion Cen­ter

Advi­so­ry cen­ter on con­tem­po­rary inter­na­tion­al prac­tices and their legal imple­men­ta­tion ”Human Con­stan­ta”

Office for the Rights of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties

Cen­ter for Legal Trans­for­ma­tion “Lawtrend”

Forb Ini­tia­tive

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The state­ment is not intend­ed to sup­port the polit­i­cal posi­tion of the above per­sons or any of the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nees.