On August 23, Tsentralny district court of Homiel passed a guilty verdict in the case of local resident, loader Syarhei Balakhonau.
The 22-year-old man was accused of insulting the president (Article 368 of the Criminal Code) for sharing the song ‘Lukashenka, Step Down’ (warning, it contains expletives) by rapper Nokrolik on Vkontakte social network, Silnye Novosti reports.
He was sentenced to one year of imprisonment in a minimum security penal colony. According to information by RFE/RL, the case was considered by judge Viktar Kazachok.
The defendant states that he was just scrolling down VKontakte posts and adding songs to his profile page so that he could listen to them later. Syarhei did not listen to the above mentioned song immediately. In his telling, he did not try to delve into its meaning; he realised that the song was ‘offensive’ only when he was detained.
In accordance with the prosecution’s version, the Homiel resident posted the song ‘intentionally, aiming at compromising the authority of the president’. In turn, Syarhei Balakhonau The man pleaded guilty and repented, but he stresses that he just liked the tune and one should not have suspected any ‘political hostility’ related to the fact of sharing.
A policeman who testified against the defendant in court claims that the song was found on Balakhonau‘s page in course of some ‘monitoring’. Then ‘search operations’ were carried out; they allegedly showed that the man had a ‘negative attitude to the police and the authorities’. However, the witness refused to go into detail and explain what they managed to establish the fact of such attitude.
Syarhei’s pregnant wife is waiting for his release.
