Israilevich Sues Novy Chas 40,000 BYN. Next court session on September 10

Novy Chas is rep­re­sent­ed by its chief edi­tor Aksana Kolb and the author of the inves­ti­ga­tion Dzia­n­is Ivashyn. Ivashyn is also rep­re­sent­ed by Aleh Aheyeu, lawyer of the Belaru­sian Asso­ci­a­tion of Jour­nal­ists. The main court hear­ing was sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber 10. The court also oblig­ed Arkadz Izraile­vich, the appli­cant, to appear in the court­room for the hear­ing.

Izraile­vich claims, Novy Chas pub­lished a series of arti­cles that com­pro­mise his hon­or, dig­ni­ty and busi­ness rep­u­ta­tion.

The law­suit against the news­pa­per and jour­nal­ist Ivashyn is based on the fact that the con­tent of the arti­cles clear­ly sug­gests that he and his IB com­pa­ny are the ulti­mate ben­e­fi­cia­ries of buikd­ing a restau­rant in Kura­p­aty . Izraile­vich points out, the con­struc­tion of the restau­rant, «Let’s Go and Eat» receives «col­lid­ing» respons­es from the pub­lic. Hav­ing read the arti­cles, some peo­ple devel­oped a neg­a­tive atti­tude towards me as a busi­ness leader who can orgaize con­struc­tion at the memo­r­i­al for prof­it,» — Izraile­vich com­plains.

The claim amounts to 40,000 BYN (about $20,000). If sat­is­fied, the suit might let the news­pa­per go bank­rupt.

Izraile­vich also wants 1,000 BYN from author Dzia­n­is Ivashyn.

BAJ lawyer Aleh Aheyeu says, Arkadz Izraile­vich has expressed hs opin­ion on the con­struc­tion many times on dif­fer­ent web­sites and media.  In fact, his own state­ments drew neg­a­tive feed­back from the audi­ence, and not the arti­cles.

Aksana Kolb, chief edi­tor, says: «We will con­tin­ue to prove the friv­o­lous­ness of the claim. We hope that the court rules in favor of the free­dom of speech and rejects the claim com­plete­ly.…

In Decem­ber 2007 Per­shamais­ki court of Min­sk ruled to exact 50 mil­lion BYR from Novy Chas to Mikalai Charhinets, mem­ber of the Coun­cil of the Repub­lic, for insult­ing his hon­or and dig­ni­ty. At that time, that equaled $23,000.  

Novy Chas is a week­ly cov­er­ing polit­i­cal and social issues pub­lished since 2002. This is one of the very few news­pa­pers that use only Belaru­sian lan­guage.