Police busy with monitoring of Charter’97 website

• 28.05.2012, 10:04

It looks as if police has hurled all effort at the only thing, tracking down information about any political activities of citizens.

“Ezhednevnik” newspaper has analyzed activities of the Interior Affairs Ministry over the last two months, and found disturbing trends threatening the Belarusian society. No fantasies, just official reports of policemen themselves…

The Interior Affairs Ministry of Belarus keeps repeating that they are not engaged in secret service functions, political spying, but they bring to responsibility opponents of the regime when they violate the law.

It’s true, the law of Belarus “On Internal Affairs Bodies of the Republic of Belarus”, Article 2, defines the main purposes and objectives of police, and nothing is said about politically motivated spying there. Proceeding from these purposes outlined by the law, it may safely be said that if a policeman do not have someone to defend, to hunt for or to guard at a certain moment, the main purpose of a policeman is rendering aid to “citizens, state institutions, public associations or other organisations in exercising their rights and responsibilities.” To put it simple, they can help an old lady to cross the road, to show the way to a driver and so on. Such nice moments can happen certainly. But the more important this is still…

Mixing apples and oranges

Thus, in one of the police reports it is said that during a monitoring of charter97.org website carried out by law-enforcing agencies, “threatening” information… about dissemination of “Narodnaya Volya” newspaper in Maladzechna was found. It is hard to understand what the value of such information for law-enforcing agencies is, and what it has to do with the objectives of the police.

“Narodnaya Volya” newspaper is an officially registered mass medium in Belarus, and under Article 17 of the Law “On Mass Media” the newspaper could be unreservedly distributed in any Belarusian town or immediately by the editorial office or by hired distributors.

However, though it is a very simple and indisputale truth, when policemen learnt that “Narodnaya Volya” newspaper is distributed in Maladzechna, they held a total examination of the town. It is not reported how many operative detectives had been occupied by that, and how much budget money wasted. By the way, such global operational procedures for examination of the entire town are not held even when there are mining reports. And in this case it was just a newspaper which could be bought in any post office.

However, as a result of the search in the city, distributors of the newspaper were not found, so the materials of the operational search measures were forwarded to the local police department for a further investigation to be held, and all this “valuable” information was forwarded to the central office of the Interior Affairs Ministry of Belarus.

Police artistic crafts

And on May 8 this year there was a much more “serious” incident. 72-year-old pensioner called the Main Police directorate of Minsk executive committee. She informed that at the station “Roshchya” a cartoon depicting the president had been painted.

It should be noted that the cartoon is just a kind of art, and it is not something illegal or banned in Belarus. Moreover, the Belarusian ideology workers often call labour collectives to use this style of art more actively in wall papers as a weapon against alcoholism, sloth and parasitism.

And policemen do not like caricatures, especially the ones with the president. So after a signal from the pensioner an operational investigation team arrived to the “scene of the action.” After they arrived to the scene of the action, they found out that at a distance of 400 metres from the station of commuter trains, near a domestic building there was a slogan “SHOS” (“Let him die”) on a relay case. It was made in white paint. There was also an image of an animal with a human head and a tail, made in black and white paint.

To be fair, it should be said that a cartoon is not always an innocent art object. In some cases cartoons can damage honour, dignity and business reputation of a person, and even insult representatives of a certain denomination (just recall prophet Mohammed cartoons). However, before speaking about any harm by the cartoon and any violation of the law, this cartoon should at least be attributed to some person, group or organisation.

However, in that case policemen did not held an art examination of the image found by the pensioner, and even did not ask the pensioner why she decided that “Let him die” and an animal meant to be related to the president of Belarus. Policemen simply took the paint and made a replica of Malevich’s picture over the cartoon.

And the local police department was ordered to carry out investigation related to the fact of a caricature emergence, and to detect the artist.

About Belarusian trolls

Recently Belarusian citizens have an impression that law-enforcers are very nearly the most frequent viewers of independent web resources. They have even been dubbed trolls. Ad here goes another “anxious” police report which confirms this opinion.

On April 25 “during monitoring of the Internet” policemen found out that an article “Independent newspapers pasted at bus stop in Maladzechna” was posted at charter97.org website. Policemen interpreted it in their way: “Oppositional newspapers were pasted at a bus stop”.

If we look at the matter from the formally legal point of view, it is no crime to disseminate “oppositional newspapers”. There is not even a legal formula to define an oppositional newspaper. There is nothing about that in the law “On Mass Media” either, as well as in numerous decrees of the Information Ministry of Belarus.

In this case there could be a violation of the law if newspapers not registered under a prescribed procedure would have been distributed (if there would be more than 299 copies of them), or if local authorities would have banned pasting newspapers in that place. But anyway, the political “inclination” of the newspaper does not have any difference, if it is not a pornographic newspaper of course.

However, police chiefs were interested just by the oppositional inclination of the newspapers. So local policemen were immediately sent to examine bus stops in Maladzechna, and they did not find any such newspapers there. They probably were the most educated Belarusian policemen, who knew for sure, that the law does not give a definition what an oppositional newspaper is, and how police should react to it.

About trolls and more

The following information confirms that trolls have occupied Belarusian websites, and they do not have rest even on holidays.

Thus, on March 8, 2012 during monitoring of the Internet by law-enforcers, a photo story about a rally in support of Andrei Sannikov was found at the charter97.org website.

It is generally known that the official regime does not recognize Andrei Sannikov as a political prisoner, and they do not stop repeating that there are no such persons in our happy country. In this connection it is interesting how the Interior Affairs Ministry described such a rally in their reports. Let’s quote it: “The rally on the birthday of a political prisoner, a presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov in Barysau.” It is of interest, what would old man Freud say about that?