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Opposition activist sentenced to fine for staging one-person demonstration in memory of journalist Dzmitry Zavadski

 

A judge of the Savetski District Court in Minsk on July 8 imposed a fine on Pavel Prakapovich, an activist of the unregistered Belarusian Christian Democracy (BCD) party, for a one-person demonstration marking the 13th anniversary of the disappearance of journalist Dzmitry Zavadski.

Mr. Prakapovich was found guilty of violating regulations governing “mass events” under Article 23.34 of the Civil Offenses Code and fined 2,500,000 rubels ($290).

The judge ignored the defense lawyer’s argument that a one-person demonstration could not be viewed as a mass event, reported the press office of the BCD party.

Mr. Prakapovich was arrested by police on Sunday evening after he put up an image of Dzmitry Zavadski in Minsk’s downtown Yakub Kolas Square and lit a candle in memory of the missing journalist.
Mr. Prakapovich spent the night in police custody.

Dzmitry Zavadski, once Alyaksandr Lukashenka's personal cameraman, disappeared on July 7, 2000 at Minsk National Airport, where he had arrived to meet Pavel Sharamet, his long-time colleague and friend. His car was found parked near the airport, but the 28-year-old journalist was never seen again. His alleged kidnappers, Valery Ihnatovich and Maksim Malik, ex-members of Almaz, an elite special task police unit, were sentenced to life in 2002, but they were found guilty of kidnapping, not murdering Dzmitry. The trial failed to establish what happened to him after his abduction. Although his body was never found, a district court in Minsk declared him dead in November 2003.

Dzmitry Zavadski resigned from Belarusian Television in 1996 to join Russia's ORT television network and was later briefly imprisoned for his reporting.

The journalist is widely believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by a government-run death squad. // BelaPAN