Invited to negotiations and arrested. Chaos and perplexity in authorities

The European March applicant, activist of the civil campaign “Jeans – For Freedom” Yauhen Afnahel was arrested 15 minutes after the negotiations in The Minsk City Executive Committee on holding of the European March.

Just after he left the City Executive Committee he was put under observation, than the oppositionist was caught and sentenced to 10 days of arrest on fabricated charges on a closed trial. Viktar Ivashkevich, Anatol Liabedzka and Andrei Sannikov are commenting the arrest of one of the European March applicants.

Viktar Ivashkevich, the European March organizing committee head and the BNF Party (Belarusian Popular Front) deputy head:

- The arrest of Yauhen Afnahel confirms that the authorities are bewildered today and don’t know how to behave in new political and economic conditions that have formed in Belarus. And the yesterday’s actions - on one side the negotiations on holding of the European March, on the other side - the arrest of one of the European March applicants, demonstrate chaos and mess in the heads of the officials. Because from one side they want to demonstrate the European partners they are democratic, but by the arrest they even this message.

The United Civil Party leader Anatol Liabedzka:

- I am on the conference in Vilnius at the moment, which was organized as one of the possibilities of the dialog between the authorities and the opposition. Indeed, only one deputy of the “house of representatives” has come to the conference. He told us that everything is allegedly fine and great in our country. And than I gave an example of Yauhen Afnahel. The opposition is giving hand to the authorities, but the authorities answer with blow. How they can say after that we have no problems when one of the European March applicants just after the consultation with the city authorities was caught and guarded to militia? The authorities couldn’t more vividly demonstrate their repressive policy to the conference participants – parliamentarians from many European countries. The example of Yauhen Afnahel’s the arrest was convincing. The authorities haven’t still response to the call of the opposition to start a dialog on the basis of the responsibility for the future.

Andrei Sannikov, the negotiation group of the European March member, international coordinator of Charter’97:

- If we examine how meanly and cynically the authorities treaded the European March organizers Yauhen Afnahel, Zmiter Barodka, Leanid Navitski, and human rights activist Sviatlana Harohavik, we can suppose that there is a group in the authorities whose goal is full isolation of Belarus. This absurd reaction on the organizing the peaceful nonconfrontational action demonstrate the full absence of circumspect approach to solving the economic and geopolitical problems in the leadership. The chance remains that somebody will take the responsibility for finding the way out from this complicated situation, otherwise it leads to the chaos in the leadership of the country and absence of the opportunities of taking better decisions.