English

Justice ministry once again denies registration to Malady Front

The Belarusian justice ministry has, for the sixth time, denied state registration to an opposition youth group called Malady Front, BelaPAN reports.

Malady Front, which has been in existence for more than a decade, held its most recent founding conference on January 30. Eighty-one of the 86 delegates who attended the conference affixed their names to the list of the organization’s founders.

According to the ministry, registration has been denied because Malady Front does not have a proper legal address.

In addition, the ministry says, 43 of Malady Front's founders were punished under the Administrative Offenses Code at least once, with Chairman Zmitser Dashkevich found guilty of administrative offenses 16 times, Deputy Chairman Ivan Shyla 17 times and members Krystsina Samoylava and Dzyanis Karnow 13 and 11 times, which the ministry says suggests that the organization does not intend to abide by regulations and refrain from disturbing the public order and infringing on the rights of other people.

The justice ministry, one of the highest legal institutions in Belarus, has once again showed that it has a "presumption of guilt" for Malady Front, the organization's spokesman, Stanislaw Stesik, commented in an interview with BelaPAN on Wednesday.

“Malady Front will now hold a founding conference every three months,” Mr. Dashkevich told BelaPAN. “And each time the justice ministry will have to give substantiated reasons to explain why it denies us registration.”

“The justice ministry’s registration denials have always been absurd from a legal viewpoint,” he said. “An example of the absurdity is the fact that in reply to our attempt to get registered in 2007, the justice ministry said that it would not register us because our organization had many members who had been convicted of activities on behalf of an unregistered organization.”

In November 2006, Mr. Dashkevich was sentenced to 18 months in prison for acting on behalf of an unregistered organization. He spent more than 15 months in prison before being granted an early release in late January 2008.

In 2007, six Malady Front activists were heavily fined and two warned on the same charge.