YURY KHADYKA IMPRISONED :: Charter'97 :: News

On July 5 in the evening vice chairman of the party Belarusian Popular Front Yury Khadyka was arrested by police next to his house and taken to the special detention center in the Akrestsyna Street in Minsk.

On March 24 this year Professor Khadyka participated in celebration of the Freedom Day in Hrodna. The celebration was absolutely peaceful, but Yury Khaduka was arrested together with other participants. However thanks to numerous appeals, phone calls of the BPF members, human rights organizations and journalists he was released before the court scheduled for April 8.

Professor Khadyka went to Prague to read a course of lectures in the Charles University and returned to Minsk. On April 8 as a honest man he went to Hrodna for the court. Judge Dzemchanka sentenced him to 10 days of arrest according to the Article 167 Part 1 of the Administrative Code, although he was not the organizer of the action. He did not clashed with the police either.

Hrodna police was afraid to incarcerate him according to the verdict, and Professor Khadyka returned to Minsk. On July 8 the term of validity of the verdict expires. But late at night on July 5 he was seized by the entrance to his house, where he went for a walk with his dog. Three days before the sentence expired this old man with feeble health was jailed.

The Belarusian Popular Front Party demands the authorities to stop showing contempt to one of its leaders. The chairman of the party Vincuk Viachorka said that “This delayed reprisal over Professor Khadyka is another illustration of the fact that the regime is not going to acquire a human face. The unjust court over the BPF members reporters Mikola Markevich and Paval Mazheika, a case against Viktar Ivashkevich, another vice chairman of the Front, sadistic beating of the artist and our member Ales Pushkin and, finally, Yury Khadyka’s arrest prove that the Lukashenka’s authorities hate freedom of expression and independent thinking. But they would not intimidate us”.