Sirenka gets promotion

Viktar Sirenka, a former chief of the hospital of emergency medical service, who has been banned from entering the EU and US after the events on December 19, has been appointed to a new post.

Now he heads the committee for health care at the Minsk city executive committee, “Narodnaya Volya” newspaper writes.

The appointment went unnoticed. On May 10, Minsk mayor Mikalai Ladutska introduced the new head of the capital’s medical service and handed in a service certificate at a meeting in the Minsk city executive committee.

In other circumstance, this Sirenka’s career development could have been explained by the fact that the authorities saw a talented leader and decided to entrust him with heading the capital’s medical service. During four years Sirenka was a chief the hospital of the emergency medical service, one of the most difficult and responsible divisions of Minsk’s medicine. The hospital building underwent complete overhaul; the medical institution bought brand-new equipment; highly professional doctors were hired.

But Sirenka became famous due to another cause. On the night after December 19, 2010 presidential elections, beaten presidential candidate Uladzimir Nyaklyaeu was forcefully kidnapped from the hospital headed by Sirenka. Viktar Sirenka was at hospital at that moment, but neither he nor his subordinates interfered and stopped this treatment with a patient, moreover, a patient of the emergency room, a zone of authorized entry.

Besides, it was Viktar Sirenka who changed diagnosis to Nyaklyaeu. When Nyaklyae was being kidnapped, journalists standing near the emergency room heard his diagnosis: light closed craniocerebral injury, hematome of the left orbit, soft tissue bruises. Some hours later, when Nyaklayeu was already kidnapped, chief doctor Sirenka gave a certificate saying Nyaklyaeu had only bruises. The head injury was not mentioned there. Volha Nyaklyaeva’s request for copies of the documents with the initial diagnosis was declined.

In January 2011, Viktar Sirenka was put on the EU list of Belarusian citizens banned from entering the EU countries after December 19. In May, Viktar Sirenka got a promotion.