Pavel Levinau: Why do they punish for white-red-white flags and don't punish for Soviet ones?
- 30.03.2015, 16:43
A human rights defender from Vitebsk demands to find and punish sellers of USSR flags.
Pavel Levinau filed a report to the head of the Vitebsk regional police, informing him about unidentified persons with Soviet red flags near Evikom shopping mall, Viasna human rights centre reports.
The human rights defender attached two photographs to his report, depicting a young man and a woman who violated public order on March 20 and 25, namely impeded the movement of people, offered them to buy symbols of the former Soviet Union and demonstrated their political views by pointing at the notice “Born in the USSR”.
The human rights activists thinks the actions by the abovementioned persons violate article 23.34 of the Code of Administrative Offences (organising and holding an unsanctioned mass event).
“The man and the woman, who were noticed near Evikom shopping mall in Tereshkova Street on March 20 and 25, were demonstrating their political interests. It was a picket with the use of flags that are not registered in due order. Moreover, they impeded the movement of other people. The police should properly react to the offence and punish them in the same way as they punish people who white-red-white flags. I think it is not difficult to identify the picketers. I attached photographs of them found on the Internet and those made by my friends and me.”
Pavel Levinau stresses that distributors of Soviet flags do not hide, often appear near Evikom and don't mind being photographed. They don't speak and show with gestures they are deaf.
The human rights defender asks the police chief to take the case under control and order the Kastrychnitski district police department to investigate it:
“Let them investigate it. Law must be equal for all. It is not hard to identify the distributors of the Soviet symbols, as major Aliaksandr Rybakou, the head of the public order department of the Chyhunachny district police station, managed to identify the participants of the famous photo shoot with birds and cages. The journalists and activists were identified on the basis of photos on the Internet, and major Rybakou charged each of them with participating in an unsanctioned event, though they didn't have flags. They only had origami cages and birds, but the police and the court decided they demonstrated their political interests. It is the people with Soviet symbols who demonstrate their political interests!”
Levinau asks to inform him about the investigation of the case, moreover that many people don't like Soviet flags and the way the distributors haunt people. The man and the woman give people a flag and then show a notice, reading that it costs 20,000 rubles. Most people don't buy them and return the flags when they discover it's not a gift.