50 residents of Hrodna threaten to refuse Belarusian citizenship

Over 20 families face eviction in Hrodna.

Their house has turned into a dormitory unexpectedly for the residents themselves. It is to be closed for reconstruction and then inhabited with new tenants, Nasha Niva reports.

The residents are being called to court one by one in order to announce the similar resolutions: to evict from the taken premises with the provision of other living space in a dormitory. “We will not leave, they can only take us out”, - the residents promise.

The people have settled in the house in the late 1980-ies as the employees of Hrodnazhylstroy. “We came from the dormitories, to which they are now sending us back, we were given these housing as an improvement of living conditions”, - they say.

It is difficult to guess that the multistoried building is a dormitory according to papers. It looks like a usual residential house. There are no doorwomen at the entrance, there entrance door intercoms, one and two-room apartments with kitchens and bathrooms – decently looking small-family apartments. There are usual registration stamps in the passports of the residents. “We did not sign any papers that we were settling in a temporary housing, no one warned us”, - they say.

For the first time they were asked to leave the house in 2010. When Siamion Shapira was appointed the chairman of Hrodna region executive committee, the initiative group managed to have a meeting with him. “He listened and said about us to the subordinates: let them buy out their housing”, - a participant of the meeting Ala Zajac recollects. The residents then received an official paper from the executive committee, which stated: “There will be no eviction of the citizens, the issue of changing of the building’s functional purpose is not being considered”. In a year Shapira started talking differently: it appeared that the residents had misled him.

The court’s decision does not say, when the residents must leave the apartments. It means that there is still some time for the fight. “In normal countries they build dog nurseries that are better than the dormitories to which they are removing us. We are led into despair, sometimes lynch law thoughts come up. If they evict us, we will refuse Belarusian citizenship. We will ask for asylum in Poland or Russia”, - they promise.