Arrests on Saint Valentine’s Day :: Charter'97 :: News

During the street action “I Love Belarus!”, held by the Young Front on February 14 in Minsk, police detained 6 dissenters.

In the afternoon of February 14 a few groups of YF activists paid visit to the diplomatic compounds of Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, Poland, USA and other countries, as well as UN and OSCE representations in order to pass over to their employees YF’s greetings and two petitions. The first contained a call not to impose iron curtain on the border with Belarus, while the second – proposal to nominate leader of Cuban opposition O.Paya as Nobel Prize laureate, reports BelaPAN. (In the OSCE office the youth were personally greeted by Eberhard Haiken – a newly appointed head of the organization’s mission in Belarus).

Several dozen YF activists assembled at 5p.m. at the Yakub Kolas square. “We will not give up Belarus neither to Lukashenko’s regime nor Russia,” – the YF leader Pavel Severinets told the action’s activists. After his speech the protesters marched along the Skorina prospect in the direction of the Academy of sciences, where the head of the movement announced the end of rally and called on everyone to dismiss. After that a group of activists with Severinets at the head moved out towards the Victory square, a few hundred meters away from which six of them got apprehended by the accompanying police patrol, reports BelaPAN. Severinets, Filipovich, Finkevich, Medvedev, Ikelov and Gnedchik were delivered to the Sovietsky district police station of Minsk.