Due to appeal to the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) Viciebsk member of the Conservative Christian Party BPF Jan Dzyarzhautsau managed to defend their rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly. According to the decision the HRC, adopted recently, representatives of the State unreasonably restricted the right of opposition activist when detained him with a poster in support of the boycott of the elections and takes offense fine for alleged illegal picketing.

Handling Dzyarzhautsau the HRC came to the 2010 presidential election. As a consistent supporter of a boycott of the elections in Belarus, the activists went to the "Cinema House" with a poster urging citizens to refrain from participating in the forthcoming elections. Along with him in the campaign was attended by well-known in Viciebsk nonpartisan opposition leader Boris Khamaida, who also believes that after the changes of the Constitution of 1994 in Belarus: there is no legitimate bought, and that all the elections held in the country since then, are nothing more as a farce .

Both participants of the picket were detained by police, they drew up a report on administrative offense, and on the same day a judge of the court of the Railway District of Viciebsk Elena Tsygankova decided that the opposition actually violated the law on mass events. Boris Khamaida was commanded to five days of administrative arrest, and Jan Dzyarzhautsau fined 10 basic units (whereas it was 350 thousand rubles).

Judge Tsygankova decision was then appealed to the Viciebsk Regional and Supreme Courts, but as usual, it has not brought results: the highest court agreed with the just punishment of the opposition, since they do not have permission to share and spent it in a place that does not mean in sites list, the designated local authorities under public events.

The Human Rights Committee, having received the mourning Dzyarzhautsau She tried to get a comment on the State of the case. However – and this behavior has become the norm for Belarusian officials recently – state officials refused to cooperate with the HRC. Like, the complainant not to use all legal remedies in the country, because, among other things, did not pay a supervisory complaint to the President of the Supreme Court; therefore, the HRC was not supposed to take it to the consideration of mourning, and the government refuses to comment on its merits.

As a result, the committee had to remind the Belarusian authorities that when the State acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Optional Protocol thereto, it is assumed the obligation to recognize competencies HRC to take to deal with individual communications Citizens who claim to be victims of violations of their rights . And this committee's prerogatives, not the state, to determine which messages should be registered citizens, and which  should not.

Since Belarus officials refused to cooperate with the HRC, he was forced to make a decision on the case based only on the basis of the facts given by Jan Dzyarzhautsau, and a copy of the documents, which he attached to his messages.

The conclusion arrived at by the committee: the State had violated the right to an opposition activist, who provided part 2 of Article 19 of the Covenant (the right to publicly express opinions) and Article 21 (right to peaceful assembly).

Now, according to the decision the HRC, Belarus is obliged to compensate Jan Dzyarzhautsau all losses incurred, as well as to take measures to prevent similar violations of the rights of citizens in the future, for what is necessary to review its legislation, in particular, the Law "On mass events".