How to get permission to take pictures in the street?
“The father” of the Law on Mass Actions, Anatol Hlaz, claims that taking pictures is not a picket. However, policemen says that there is "a million of nuances".
MP Anatol Hlaz claims that taking pictures cannot be called a picket and that it is impossible to subject people to administrative responsibility for it.
Anatol Tsihanovich was the person who presented the updated version of the Law on Mass Actions in the House of Representatives on October 2011.
According to the law, even a hunger-strike can be called a picket. Any public demonstration of interests can be a picket: "civil, political, group, personal (!) and other (!) interests". Even if only one person takes part in a street event, it can be called a picket. Pickets can be organized "with or without posters, transparencies and other things". So, it does not matter whether "picketers" are holding cameras or teddy bears in their hands.
I phoned the order and prevention department of Hrodna police:
― It is necessary to get permission for a mass action to take pictures with a teddy bear in the street now?
Policeman: “I think that you know that the City Executive Committee gives permissions for mass actions. If you would like to organize a mass action, ask them, please".
― But it is not an action. We just want to take pictures of ourselves in the street. There will be no officials from the City Executive Committee but there will be policemen. Will they detain us?
Policeman: “You can only be detained if you violate the order".
― Won't we break the Law on Mass Actions?
Policeman: “You know, there is a million nuances".
However, the policeman avoided the question about the kind of those nuances. We have not managed to find it out in the ideology department of Hrodna City Executive Committee although the policeman advised that we phoned there.
Official: “Just read the law. If you have questions, ask the author of the law. Ask them and you won't be making such strange phone calls".
The youth civil organization "Avant-guard" organizes a few flash mobs in Minsk every month. Its head Marat Abramouski asked Minsk City Executive Committee for permission to do it from time to time - just in case.
It is not difficult to send an application for a flash mob to Minsk City Executive Committee, says Marat Abramouski. But should you do it every time you go out with a camera?
Photo by: bigpicture.ru.
