Little is yet known about the case of Eduard Palchys, nicknamed Jhon Silver, who is a creator of the 1863x.com website. His relatives are reluctant to contact reporters and to disclose any details, while the investigating authorities confine themselves to uncluttered messages. Some politicians and opposition activists were quick to say that the charges were politically motivated, since Palchys’ publications defended the independence of the country. However, human rights defenders are in no hurry to give a clear assessment of the case unless more details are disclosed. At the same time, they quickly responded to a ban on access to a lawyer.
On 14 June the Human Rights Center “Viasna” has released a statement about the fact that the Palchys’s lawyer is not allowed to visit his client, and demanded to respect the procedural guarantees and rights of the detained blogger. Probably, this statement helped, as on 15 June the lawyer was allowed to meet with Palchys.
Valiantsin Stefanovich of the Human Rights Center “Viasna”, who has been monitoring the blogger’s case, says that the right to legal protection is guaranteed to all Belarusian citizens by Article 62 of the Constitution and the Criminal Procedure Code.
“A citizen has the right to be protected from the moment of detention,” Stefanovich underlined. “This includes, in particular, the possibility of unhindered and confidential meetings with a lawyer, unlimited in frequency and duration. The right to protection is one of the basic procedural safeguards.”
Stefanovich stressed out that, according to Palchys’ former lawyer, she was not allowed to see her client for quite a long time, which violated his rights.
“That’s why we made a statement, as we had repeatedly witnessed such violations before,” the human rights defender said.
However on 16 June there was the information that Palchys refused to use the services of a lawyer Hanna Bakhtsin and asked for a state attorney.
One of the defendants in the case of the riots at the Independence Square on 19 December, 2010 a journalist Iryna Khalip wrote on her “Facebook” page that back then she was also forced to refuse the services of the lawyer, because she was threatened that if she did not do this, the lawyer would be deprived of the license . She does not excluded that right now Palchys is in the same situation as herself.
At the same time human rights defenders do not exclude political motive of persecution of the blogger.
“But in order to draw conclusions, we have to analyze those texts, which, according to the investigation, incited hatred, and to obtain information concerning the publication of pornography on the website,” Stefanovich said. “We assume that an examination may have groundlessly found elements of hate speech in Palchys’ texts.”
Stefanovich said that it is essential to examine the posts by experts, for example, from the Belarusian Association of Journalists.
“It is not until then that we can draw conclusions about the nature of Palchys’ persecution: either for expressing his opinion or for inciting hatred (hate speech),” the human rights defender said. “Hate crimes should not be tolerated by the state.”
In the end of May Eduard Palchys, who was detained on the territory of the Russian Federation, was extradited to Belarus. He was earlier charged under Part 1, Art. 130 (“incitement to racial, national or religious enmity or discord”), and Part 2, Art. 343 (“dissemination of pornographic materials”) of the Criminal Code for the publications on the 1863x.com Internet site. The named publications were removed from the site.
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