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Photojournalist expects judge to side with authorities in Belarus Press Photo case

Photojournalist Yuliya Darashkevich said on Wednesday that she expected a district judge to declare a book featuring the best pictures selected for the 2011 Belarus Press Photo contest "extremist material."

Judge Alyaksandr Davydaw of the Ashmyany District Court started hearing the case on Wednesday. He will pronounce his judgment the following day.

As Ms. Darashkevich, a co-organizer of the photojournalism contest, told BelaPAN, a representative of a commission that had examined the book at the request of the Committee for State Security (KGB) and found it extremist gave confused replies to questions from her lawyer at the hearing.

Asked why the commission had described as "humiliating the dignity and authority of government agencies and the police" an image caption saying that a "police officer is beating up" a post-election protester in Independence Square in Minsk on December 19, 2010, Pavel Skrabko, head of the Hrodna Regional Executive Committee's Ideology Department, replied, "We all know what was in the square, the police were protecting the state and state property." "When the lawyer wondered that if the police had been fulfilling their duty and had had all legal grounds to beat up the demonstrators why [the caption] humiliated their dignity, the expert did not answer," Ms. Darashkevich said.

She said that it was captions under photographs dealing with the subject of the 2010 presidential election rather than the pictures themselves that had been criticized by the commission.

The commission's members acknowledged at the hearing that they could not conclude whether or not the pictures had been doctored.

"The lawyers maintained that the experts did not have the competence to assess the book as they don't have the education for that," Ms. Darashkevich said.

A statement by art figures, independent experts and prominent photographers who express a high opinion of the book was added to the case file. However, the judge did not accept conclusions by the Belarusian Helsinki Committee, which had found the book to contain no calls for extremist activities.

"I don't believe in the fairness of the judicial system," said Mr. Darashkevich. "I think they will most likely find the book extremist."

The reporter said that a bookstore in Minsk had already refused to sell copies of the book.

"It was extremely hard to hold any exhibitions and after this story it will become nearly impossible to do that altogether," she said. //BelaPAN