Belarusian man punished for insulting native language


This is the first such case in 17 years. Last time the person was drawn to administrative responsibility for insulting Belarus was in 1999 (Article 9.22 of the Administrative Code (violation of the language legislation).

Resident of Mazyr Dzmitry Shcharbatykh who had on numerous occasions insulted the Belarusian language received a fine of four basic units due to the actions of Homiel resident Ihar Sluchak. The man is working on a master’s thesis on “The Legal Basis of State Language Policy in the Republic of Belarus”. It means that in addition to the defense of national values, Ihar was interested in the legal part of the conflict as part of his scientific work.

The conflict started with former offside.by employee Dzmitry Shcharbatykh leaving a comment in a social network forum where people discussed a new billboard for the football club “Slavia” with inscriptions in Belarusian. Dzmitry Shcharbatykh posted there an offensive comment.

“I offered the man to apologize, but he pretended to have a poor understanding of the Belarusian language and did not apologize, even though he had a college education,” said Ihar Sluchak.

Then Ihar turned to the Mazyr Regional Executive Committee with a request to bring the Mazyr citizen to responsibility in accordance with Article 9.22 of the Administrative Code (violation of legislation on languages), for public insult of the Belarusian language. Ihar then received a reply from the executive committee stating that they had had a serious talk with Mr Shcharbatykh.

This reaction did not satisfy Mr Sluchak

“I again offered Dzmitry Shcharbatykh to apologize, he again refused and began to abusive me. It means that he was not “aware of his misconduct”. That’s why I turned to the prosecutor,” said Ihar.

Mr Sluchak adds that it was not the first time that the resident of Mazyr Dzmitry Shcharbatykh insulted the mother tongue in public and that there is more proof including screenshots from different pages on social networks and forums.

belsat.eu  BelaPAN

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