Having studied the documents submitted, the Belarusian Justice Ministry turned down the application for setting up the political party Sayuz (Union), the ministry’s press service reports.
According to the statement of its organising committee, the party plans to promote the development of Belarusian-Russian integration and strengthen the civilization of the so called Russian World. Sayuz also calls on Belarus authorities to recognise Crimea as Russian territory and recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
As reported earlier, Syarhei Lushch, an activist of pro-Russian movement and a former momber of a neo-Nazi group, is one of the party’s masterminds. Enjoying the support of Russian pro-imperial bodies, he has gained notoriety for advocating the ideas of the ‘Russian World’ in Belarus. Representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic and a delegate from Sevastopol (the latter was involved in the annexation of Crimea) are known to have attended the party’s constituent assembly in Minsk.
The applicants violated the procedure for establishing a political party and filed nongenuine documents, the ministry noted.
“The documents say that 1,023 persons acted as founders of the Sayuz political party. When the Justice Ministry conducted a random check of the data on the persons included in the list of founders (150 out of 1,023 founders were checked), it was found that 26 persons with such personal data are non-existent. Thus, the submitted documents do not confirm the availability of at least 1,000 founders in the Soyuz political party,” the statement reads.
In addition, the officials reports a number of other inaccuracies.
