Pavel Levinau Sues BT in Court
The human rights defender from Vitebsk wants to get refutation of information about him showed in a program on the channel on February 7; he thinks the information was false and disgracing.
The program “Editors’ club” was dedicated to problems in Ukraine. It included a three minutes’ episode about the meeting of Miklos Haraszti, UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus, and human rights activists held in Vilnius.
The plaintiff thinks that the chairperson of the BT Henadz Davydzka made offensive negative assessments, like “so called human rights defenders” were telling stories” (the phrase used was a jargon derogatory phrase). The guest of the program, a deputy from the Minsk City Executive Committee, described the human rights defenders with a phrase meaning “riffraff”.
Pavel Levinau, from Vitebsk branch of Viasna and BAJ member, was one of the persons who had met the UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus, and says he was personally offended by the statements on the state TV. He first requested a possibility to speak on the channel, too, however, the company declined his request.