Separation :: Charter'97 :: News

Riana Novikova is 1,5 years old. She was born in Paris and is currently living with her mum in Serdicha street in Minsk. Little baby and her mother were violently separated. On October 17, 2002 at 9.10 a.m. officer of the ninth Minsk patrol regiment Yarosh, clothed in civilian, detained Riana’s mother, who was passing out flyers in the Skarina prospect. The girl saw her mother only late at night: when the law-enforcers convoyed her home in order to search for the leaflets there. From there they delivered the young woman to the pre-trial confinement center, despite her baby’s cries.

What kind of a heavy crime did the lady commit, if they isolated her from her little daughter? It turned out that she was charged for the same reason as Nikolai Markevich, Pavel Mozheiko and Viktor Ivashkevich. In other words, she dared publicly accuse Lukashenko of all his sins.
However, the male journalists were set free pending trial and remained free for few days after it. But Oksana Novikova, with little baby in her house, was sent behind bars even before the charges were brought.
I inquired from the law-enforcer whether he knows that Oksana Novikova is a lonely mother, whose child is one year of age. He responded that this news took the procuracy workers completely aback, for her daughter isn’t mentioned in her passport. He added that they talked with her about her daughter and even proposed to send people to watch over her, but the woman disagreed, telling her own uncle to do that instead.
Oksana said she could envisage such a situation development but, realizing that the administrative arrest cannot last for more than three hours, asked her uncle to take care of the baby during that period.
Unfortunately, police didn’t set her free at the appointed time and drove to procuracy four hours later. When I asked her why she never mentioned the fact that she has a child, Oksana said that neither officer Yarosh nor captain Kamera or police chiefs asked her about her family condition. She only said about the fact to the district prosecutor, who visited her investigator’s office. But at that moment it was already clear as daylight that they won’t let her go.
Alexander Hodotovich offered to send the child to the hospital, but when she refused, he allowed her to call home. Some of you may argue and say that Oksana shouldn’t have left her kid alone and endanger her condition by her political activism. Moreover, how come she let someone watch over her baby? I believe this variant was more suitable for her than letting the law-enforcers or doctors do it.