Struggle against satellite antennas reached Minsk (Document)
- 21.04.2008, 11:51
Struggle against satellite antennas continues in Minsk. More and more Minsk dwellers are given orders to register dishes in the local bodies of authority.
Otherwise they are threatened with court and removing of antennas. Minsk dwellers have sent to the Charter’97 press center a copy of instructions they receive from their housing and utility services.
As it follows from the instructions, housing services ordered dwellers of the houses on Newspaper Zvyazda Avenue to remove satellite antennas or legitimise them in the prescribed manner.
Hrodna dwellers have faced the same situation earlier. Dwellers of one of the houses on Kasmanautau Street wrote a collective appeal to the prosecutor’s office of the Kastrychnitski district of Hrodna, in order they consider the demand to remove antennas from the legal point of view. The prosecutor’s office re-sent the statement to the city housing and utility service.
The city housing and utility service gave a written reply. They offer to obtain permit for antennas installation in the city department of architecture. If dwellers don’t receive such a permit, they will have to remove antennas till April. In other case the utility service threatens to solve the problem “in court.”
Antenna owners note the problem is that there is no legal procedure to legitimise satellite dishes. They file requests to the department of architecture at the city executive committee in order they give an official reply: will they be able to receive a permit for installing antennas they have been using for some years.
The Charter’97 press center asked human rights activist Uladzimir Labkovich to comment on the situation.
“The case is that the Administrative Code contains an article only on unauthorised antenna installing. It provides fine. It means the state should regulate order of antenna installing. But in 2007 the Minsk city executive committee cancelled its regulations on order of antenna installing. No normative acts have been regulating that order for a long time. A necessary normative act had apparently been adopted. Formally, people who don’t install antennas in accordance to this regulation, may be brought to administrative responsibility. This tendency corresponds with the campaign of restriction of access to independent information for the Belarusians. It may be connected with the fact that independent satellite TV channel Belsat will soon be transmitted via SIRIUS Satellite System and become more available for many people. Undoubtedly, these regulations are a clearly political step,” Uladzimir Labkovich thinks.