Another letter from the Ministry of Justice on documents with illegal classification stamps
The following is an extract from the Ministry of Justice’s Letter №34-С-11350 from 2 June 2006 to one of the Maidan activists taking part in the “Maidan” Alliance campaigns “To be printed!” and “Yanukovych –come clean!”
“We would inform you that in 2005 the Ministry of Justice received 45 Acts of the President of Ukraine and 26 Acts of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with stamps restricting access.
From July 2005 to December 2005 9 requests were received from citizens to be provided with information about acts with stamps restricting access and which had been turned down in accordance with Article 7 of the Decree of the President of Ukraine from 10 June 1997 “On procedure for official publication of normative legal acts and their coming into effect”.
From January 2006 to February 2006 172 requests for information from citizens were received, asking for the names and dates of acts of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with stamps restricting access, with these being satisfied.”
This refers to the “Maidan” Alliance campaigns “To be printed!” and “Yanukovych –come clean!”, the results of which were:
1 A suspension of the issuing by the President of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine of normative acts bearing the illegal stamps restricting access “Not to be published” and “Not to be printed”.
2 The declassifying and disclosing to the public of the names of, first, 96 acts, issued by the Cabinet of Ministers under the premiership of Viktor Yanukovych, then later (in response to the formal request for information from the Co-Chair of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group and member of the “Maidan” Alliance, Yevhen Zakharov) – 295 normative acts of the Government with the stamp “Not to be printed”, passed between 2001 and 2005.
We would remind readers that the Secretariat of the President has still not managed to disclose even the names of Acts of the President issued with illegal stamps.
Our informant