Aleh Vouchak: Interpol will not save the World Championship from failure

The invitation of Interpol to Minsk is a PR move for attracting tourists and high-ranked guests to the tournament.

Such an opinion came from the head of the Legal Assistance to Citizens organization, former prosecutor office’s investigator Aleh Vouchak as he commented for the charter97.org web-site on the invitation of the representatives of Interpol to the Ice Hockey World Championship in Minsk.

“I was at the UEFA European Championship in 2012 in Kiev and studied the situation with the security measures. For what I remember, there was no Interpol. There was no open cooperation on fighting hooligans, as they say. I am, by the way, curious, whether it is among Interpol’s functions at all to secure the order at international competitions, Ice Hockey World Championships, in particular”, - the human rights activist noted.

The lawyer highlighted that Interpol are former and current policemen and in the professional sense they support each other regardless of the form of government in the country.

“It seems to me that there is no point in inviting them, because we have enough law enforcers and special service agents, who have experience in detaining and fighting opposition. Once we were going to register Aliaksandr Kazulin for the Belarusian Assembly. There were 40 of us, and they put us all down very quickly”, - the former prosecutor office’s investigator added.

Aleh Vouchak believes that the Belarusian party will acquire experience, and Interpol’s operative agents will have the access to Belarusian data bases.

“I am concerned for all this information not to be used civil society, because they can present anyone as a hooligan. For example, they may show my picture and say that I was a hooligan twice in 2012 – attacked police, waved hands, that I should be controlled if seen in the city. It is not necessary that they would detain me or my colleagues and arrest for days, but easily for up to three hours”, - the lawyer is convinced.

The human rights activist believes that Interpol agents will be given a data base of everyone who once was made administratively accountable for the Square protests, silent protests, Stop Petrol, strike in Bruzhi border crossing point etc.

“The trick is also that, according to information from different embassies, many high-ranked officials will not come to Belarus due to insufficient security measures. But if Interpol comes here, they will be able to appeal to that. By this the authorities are also trying to secure the arrival of the major teams, because we possess information from different European experts, saying that the national teams of the leading countries may not come to Belarus. This means that Interpol’s invitation is a peculiar kind of PR. Also, according to the information we have, a large number of tourists is not expected to come to Belarus”, - Aleh Vouchak claimed.

We would remind that the international police organization promises to provide assistance to municipal and national authorities in holding the Ice Hockey World Championship in 2014. For that purpose Interpol will sent Interpol Major Event Support Team to Belarus.