On April 10 the initiators of the annual action Chernobyl Shlyach petitioned the Minsk city hall with a request to let them assemble on April 26 to commemorate 17th anniversary since the nuclear disaster. The rally under slogan “Past Memories for Future’s Sake” will start at 4-4.30p.m. from the Yakub Kolas square. The planned route of the march is this: Yakub Kolas square, two lanes of Skarina prospect, Parizhskaya Komunna square (mourning meeting there at 5.30-6.30p.m.). The initiators of the event pledge to ensure public order during the action. BelaPAN reports that the plea was signed by Mikhail Goncharik, Vladimir Lobkovich, Sergei Alfer and Zmitser Marchuk.

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ZUBR activist Roman Kazakevich has been suspended from university. Despite the fact that officially they expelled him for alleged poor academic performance, the administration of the pedagogical University, where Kazakevich studied, made it clear to him that his expulsion is motivated by the young man’s political activities. According to Kazakevich, they numerously warned him in the university that politics would get him into trouble.

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Today’s issue of the “Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta” published an article on the formation of the so-called movement “For Better Life!”. As illustration to this material they give a photo from the People’s March “For Better Life!” for no good reason.

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The statue of Hussein was brought down in central Hussein. Dictator’s yesterday’s lackeys attached his monument to the US tank with ropes and dragged it down… This scene reminded many of how they destroyed a monument to Dzerjinsky – symbol of Soviet totalitarianism – back in 1991 in Moscow. Today they are kissing good-bye to dictatorship in Iraq. And those, videoed in the square, are doing that with all gladness.

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Draft law on democracy in Belarus, submitted for consideration to the US Congress, has a totally destructive character and will in no wise contribute to the development of Belarusian-American relations, said the Belarusian FM officials, adding that the bill will only complicate the bilateral relations between the two.

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Alexander Lukashenko confirmed on Wednesday the agenda of complex military maneuvers “Clean sky”, scheduled for early October this year. The head of state said that the idea of the military exercises emerged after the situation development in Iraq. “We will follow the Iraqi war pattern and learn how to oppose the massive attack of the potential aggressor,” – said Lukashenko, responding the journalists’ questions, when visiting the military aviation plant in Baranovichi.

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UN department for drug trafficking and criminality still failed to render to Belarus “technical assistance, which would correspond to the size of the country’s territory, its status and the danger of the emerged problems”. “Rosbalt” correspondent was told in the Belarusian Foreign Ministry that such a statement had been voiced by the Belarusian representatives at the 46th session of the UN Commission on drugs in Vienna.

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International business meeting “Belarus, Russia, Ukraine”, held on April 9 in the Tula region of Russia, de facto failed. Only Gennady Seleznev, speaker of the Russian Duma, came to visit the event out of all the invited high-ranking officials.

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To 15 days of arrest, which ZUBR activist Evgeny Afnagel received lately, they now added another 7. ZUBR activist was arrested and sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest for celebrating the Freedom Day. 15 days expired yesterday at 5.30p.m. However, they never released ZUBR from custody. In August last year Afnagel received 10 days of prison for rallying in support of the Belarusian independence. Back then he was set free after having served three days due to the deteriorated health condition.

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“Krynitsa” and “Vsemirnaya Literatura” magazines can go shut by the end of the year. The fate of other journals, united by the state last year into “Literatura i Mastatstva” holding, is also unclear. Any attempts to introduce ideological publications on the magazines’ pages averted from them their small readers’ audience and talented authors with well-known names. One cannot find on their pages works by Vasil Bykov, Yanka Bryl, Rygor Baradulin, Genadz Buravkin anymore.

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