This reads like an Onion headline, but I assure you that it’s not. It’s just par for the course in Belarus, where a man has been arrested for something unthinkable.

The sound of one hand clapping may be one of those proverbial mysteries, but a man was arrested and seriously punished in Minsk this week for allegedly doing it.

But Konstantin Kaplin, an unemployed man from the western town of Grodno, says he was convicted this week of applauding in public and fined the equivalent of $200, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence: He is officially registered as a disabled person and has only one arm.

Mr. Kaplin insists that he was only standing nearby and attempting to photograph demonstrators with his cell phone when plainclothes police grabbed him. ”The judge read out the charges, the police affirmed that I was applauding, and the fine was levied,” Kaplin says.

There was no examination of evidence at all, he adds.

Guess we don’t have it so bad here in the USA after all.