Ministry of Information Replies to Petition: Journalist Interfered with Police’s Actions

The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion Liliya Ananich answered that jour­nal­ist should act accord­ing to law; Pavel Dabravol­s­ki inter­fered into activ­i­ties of law enforce­ment agen­cies, which was an admin­is­tra­tive offence. The Min­is­ter of Infor­ma­tion under­lined that a jour­nal­ist should act in com­pli­ance with the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion and pro­fes­sion­al ethics.

In fact, the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion dis­missed the peti­tion in essence.

We remind that Pavel Dabravol­s­ki was found guilty of two offences (minor hooli­gan­ism and dis­obey­ing law­ful demands of the offi­cials). The jour­nal­ist was cov­er­ing a tri­al in court: when activists demon­strat­ed in court against alleged­ly polit­i­cal nature of the tri­al against graf­fi­tists, they were tak­en out of court by police offi­cers. The activists were tak­en to the back room, and the jour­nal­ist fol­lowed them with a cell phone, record­ing the actions. Then, all three of them were bru­tal­ly beat­en, peo­ple who were present in court con­firm hear­ing shouts. The jour­nal­ist was fined; he dis­agrees with the deci­sion. The appeal is to be heard on March 1.

The state­ment of rea­sons for the judge­ment quotes tes­ti­monies of the police­men who beat the jour­nal­ist. Police­man Shysho says that he assist­ed to his col­league when saw him tak­ing the vio­la­tors out of the court room: the jour­nal­ist ran after them into the cor­ri­dor and start­ed to push onto the col­league, pulled him by the col­lar. Police­man Kavalchuk said that the jour­nal­ist ran out from the hall to the iso­lat­ed cor­ri­dor and start­ed to pull him by the col­lar in the oppo­site direc­tion.

How­ev­er, the jour­nal­ist had not been in the court­room, he was in the hall all the time; and there is a video show­ing that in the hall, he did not pull any­one by col­lars, he was walk­ing in the hall with a cam­era in the hands, then went out from the hall into the back room (1:18 — 1:20 sec­onds), there heard shouts at the two detained activists in the room.