The distinguishing feature of the political court cases relating to the 19 December 2010 events has been noted by Anatoly Lebedko (a Belarusian political activist, Head of the United Civil Party or UCP). The judges at these infamous proceedings are “women only”. Thus, displaying social guile, the male judges build their own vertical career by  women’s hands. Taking into consideration the opinion of the UCP leader I want to stress that the point is not only in the social guile of a Belarusian male judge.

Watching the legal proceedings connected with the cases of “Decembrists” (The Decembrist revolt took place in Imperial Russia on 14, 1825. Following an announcement of the results on the 19th of December 2010 Belarus president election, around ten thousand people gathered in the central square of Minsk to take part in a peaceful pro-democracy rally. They were set upon by the police and the KGB, and hundreds were beaten, arrested and taken away to KGB detention centres), communicating with politicians who went through the threshing machine of Belarusian justice led me to a sad conclusion: “There is a species – a Belarusian judge as the result of evolution! And the gender does not matter here! During the 17-year rule of the present authorities a great many of court officials/officers have successfully adapted to modern conditions when the orders given by much higher officials come first and law comes second. There is a point for the major selection workers’ personal pride who are teaching to work with papers, instructing on how to work according to a telephone call, but they are not educating how to work with people in agreement only with the law! ”

Of course, the adaptation to the Belarusian system of justice is not passed on genetically from a mother judge to a daughter judge or from a senior colleague to a novice in the profession (it is known that ‘experience does not retire’!).

Personal and professional changes occur gradually, they are caused by the work of special conditions in which a Belarusian judge has to perform his/her professional functions.

By the time that a Belarusian judgeis entrusted to conduct infamous political court proceedings, the judge has no doubt successfully passed the survival test in Belarusian reality, had adjusted to it, had got a job, had been promoted, had got a certain status and  pay. A friend judge confessed that he has got ‘things to lose’ in a similar situation, but he didn’t mean the loss of honour. It is clear now that by accepting a mission from the top echelon he enters the fight for his further existence in this system implementing the principle “the administrative resource gets the upper hand of those who are not in power.”

According to Darwin the changes in the course of evolution may take two shapes: distinct and indistinct. The behavior of the women judges at the courts concerning the 19 December events is likely to demonstrate the certainty of changes. All of them follow the same scenario demonstrating similar patterns of behavior, delivering identical verdicts. It turns out the evolutionary doctrine is in the hands of injustice. I wish the courts hearing the cases of Statkevich, Uss and the youth activists disproved the conclusion! (Thursday, May 26, the Leninski district court of Minsk convicted six persons involved in the “case on December 19.” The judge considered the defendants’ guilt proved and sentenced former presidential candidate Nikolai Statkevich to six years in reinforced regime colony for organizing mass unrest on December 19, 2010. Ex-presidential candidate Dmitri Uss was jailed to five and a half years for committing a similar crime. The remaining defendants in the case were sentenced to the following prison terms: Alexander Kviatkevich – to 3.5 years of security colony, Andrei Pozniak – to 2 years of imprisonment, Dmitri Bulanov – to 3 years of intensive regime, Artem Hribkov – to 4 years of intensive regime of forced treatment for alcoholism for active participation in the riots.) It would be nice to make sure that the same conditions of authoritarian rule affect the representatives of the same profession differently.

I admit that the attempt to understand and explain the behavior of the Belarusian women judges during the political proceedings from the evolutionary standpoint is a bit of a rough model. Do not drop or omit their personal peculiarities, needs, values, levels of ambition, and fears.