Immediately stop prosecution of blogger Siarhei Piatrukhin

Min­sk — April 2, 2019

On April 9, the court of the Lienin­s­ki dis­trict of Brest will open the tri­al in the crim­i­nal case against a famous Brest blog­ger Siarhei Pia­trukhin.

The charges under Part 2 of Art. 188 (slan­der) and Part 2 of Art. 189 (insult) of the Crim­i­nal Code were brought on April 1 by the Brest inter­dis­trict depart­ment of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee.

They are linked to a series of videos filmed in March and April 2018 and uploaded to the video host­ing ser­vice YouTube. The videos allege the involve­ment of a num­ber of employ­ees of the Lienin­s­ki dis­trict police depart­ment of Brest in the beat­ing of Pavel Kamin­s­ki in the premis­es of the police sta­tion in 2016.

It should be not­ed that the vic­tim filed a state­ment in the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee, ask­ing to pros­e­cute the police offi­cers iden­ti­fied in the videos filmed by Pia­trukhin. Despite the fact that a med­ical exam­i­na­tion doc­u­ment­ed the injuries suf­fered by Kamin­s­ki and admit­ted that they could have been caused by the cir­cum­stances stat­ed by the vic­tim, the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee ruled not to insti­tute crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. Dur­ing the peri­od from 2016 to 2019, var­i­ous bod­ies issued eight deci­sions to refuse to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, sev­en of which were reversed by high­er author­i­ties of the Inves­tiga­tive Com­mit­tee and the Prosecutor’s Office, cit­ing improp­er inves­ti­ga­tion pro­ce­dures. At the moment, anoth­er com­plaint against ear­li­er rul­ings to refuse to ini­ti­ate crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings against the police offi­cers is pend­ing before the pros­e­cu­tor of Brest and the Pros­e­cu­tor General’s Office.

Giv­en that the pro­ce­dure of inves­ti­gat­ing Kaminski’s state­ment is not yet com­plet­ed, the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of Siarhei Pia­trukhin is ille­gal and ground­less. We also believe that his pros­e­cu­tion is polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and con­nect­ed exclu­sive­ly with the exer­cise of free­dom of expres­sion and the right to gath­er and dis­sem­i­nate infor­ma­tion, which are guar­an­teed by both the Con­sti­tu­tion and inter­na­tion­al stan­dards.

Decrim­i­nal­iza­tion of defama­tion offens­es is a stan­dard for­mu­lat­ed and jus­ti­fied in the deci­sions of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions. Inter­na­tion­al bod­ies, the UN and the OSCE, rec­om­mend­ed the repeal of laws that crim­i­nal­ize defama­tion, or at least not to deprive of free­dom for com­mit­ting defama­tion offens­es, tak­ing civ­il-law pro­ceed­ings as a stan­dard. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the UN, OSCE and OAS on issues of free­dom of speech stat­ed that “crim­i­nal defama­tion is not a jus­ti­fi­able restric­tion on free­dom of expres­sion; all crim­i­nal defama­tion laws should be abol­ished and replaced, where nec­es­sary, with appro­pri­ate civ­il defama­tion laws.”

Blog­ger Siarhei Pia­trukhin is a con­stant par­tic­i­pant in the protests against the con­struc­tion of an envi­ron­men­tal­ly harm­ful bat­tery fac­to­ry in Brest. He was repeat­ed­ly arrest­ed by the police for join­ing the protests.  Pia­trukhin is also known thanks to the numer­ous videos that crit­i­cize the activ­i­ties of local author­i­ties, includ­ing law-enforce­ment bod­ies.

The recent pros­e­cu­tions of blog­gers Siarhei Pia­trukhin, Ali­ak­san­dr Kabanau, and Andrei Pavuk are a mat­ter of seri­ous con­cern, as they may indi­cate a strength­en­ing of con­trol in the sphere of Inter­net on the eve of elec­tions to be held lat­er this year.

In this regard, we, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of human rights orga­ni­za­tions in Belarus, call:

• to imme­di­ate­ly stop the crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion of Siarhei Pia­trukhin and drop all the charges against him;

• to not use the Crim­i­nal Code in cas­es involv­ing defama­tion.

Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists

Human Rights Cen­ter «Vias­na»

Belaru­sian PEN Cen­ter

Belaru­sian Doc­u­men­ta­tion Cen­ter

Barys Zvozskau Belaru­sian Human Rights House

Belaru­sian Helsin­ki Com­mit­tee

Office for the Rights of Peo­ple with Dis­abil­i­ties

Com­mit­tee of the Repressed «Sol­i­dar­i­ty»

FORB Ini­tia­tive

Legal Trans­for­ma­tion Cen­ter

Legal Ini­tia­tive

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