Uladzimir Kobets: "We could have disappeared simply" :: Charter'97 :: News

We continue to publish the evidence of the Belarusians, who were detained by Ukrainian officers on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border on the night of November 24th/25th. The Zubr resistance movement coordinator Uladzimer Kobets, the coordinator of the civil initiative Charter’97 Zmitser Bandarenka, one of the leaders of the European coalition “Free Belarus” Zmitser Barodka and the Zubr press secretary Alyaksandr Atroschankaw have spent about 18 hours under arrest. Zubr coordinator Uladzimer Kobets gives some details of the incident.

“I am sure that Gornostaevka had been chosen as a place of the mobsters’ operation not by chance. It is a god-forsaken place situated in the remotest depth of the provinces, where the telephone communication is absent. They expected that nobody would know anything for a long time, as one of the people in mufti said, “You are to stew here for a long time”. Formally we had left the territory of Ukraine, as our migration cards had been collected, and passports had been checked already. These cards, if necessary, could become a proof that we have left Ukraine. Thus, in case of our disappearance the Ukrainian side would not be responsible. They could look for us between the two frontier posts, but not in Ukraine, in some town of Repki. This scenario could not have been worked up by local policemen. It was evident that local policemen could not understand what is going on, and they were telling us that a representative of Kuchma’s Administration was in control of everything.

Why did they need all that? It is well-known that “Zubr” resistance movement, cooperating closely with the Ukrainian “Pora”, declared on November 27 at October Square in Minsk at 6 p.m. an action of solidarity with the Ukrainian people. For several days orange ribbons had been handed out to people in Minsk, information about the protest was disseminated. No wonder that it incited temper of both Ukrainian and Belarusian special services.

Plain-clothes men, who had captured us, were all the time calling somebody on the phone: they were reporting to somebody and being advised by somebody. As we had learnt, the formal reason for detention would be violation of the Article 185 Part 1 of the Administrative Code – “failure to submit to legal requirements of public agents”. But the men looking like mobsters were interested in the things in our bags, pockets, our recordings, diskettes, memory of our mobile phones.

We were loaded to the mini-bus UAZ and taken to the town of Repki. It was dark in the bus, but I managed to put in a Ukrainian SIM-card to my mobile phone. Near Repki the phone started to pick up a signal. I sent the first SMS at about 2 p.m. The message was sent, but one of the policemen saw the light of my phone. They started to shout, and turned on the light in the mini-bus. With difficulty I managed to convince them that there was no signal, and that a Belarusian SIM-card was put in my mobile phone.

Zmitser Bandarenka was placed to the hospital. After a detention doctors thought that he had an arm fracture. Two nurses in white overalls felt no sympathy for us apparently. We have spent another hour in the corridors of the local police department of Repki, where we managed to charge the phone and send messages to our friends.

When Bandarenka was taken to us, we were told to remove bootlaces and belts. Somehow I manages to hide a mobile phone, and it helped greatly again… Since the early morning the phone of the local police department of Repki was red-hot because of numerous calls. People were calling from Switzerland, Serbia, people from Kyiv were also asking about our fate. The journalists of Ukrainian TV channels told about the incident as well. Soon a lawyer sent by Yushchenko’s HQ came to us.

The plan of the criminals was foiled. The attitude to us changed, and representatives of regional internal affairs department were sent to us from Chernihiv urgently. They were making no secret of the fact that a scandal had broken out, and they were not interested in it.

However, we were told that the court is not working on Thursday, and we are to appear in court on Friday. But somebody was trying to play for time. We knew that the officers that had arrived from Chernihiv started to collect information about our stay in Kyiv, we were fingerprinted. Again they wanted to examine our dictaphone recordings and a list of phone numbers in our mobile phones. Somebody was trying to concoct a frame-up, hoping for a sudden change in favor of Yanukovych. But even the local policemen, having heard many hundreds of calls from those who were alarmed and asked about our fate, were not hiding their irritation by the events, and showed us their sympathy in every way. “We had been working here for many years, but see such things for the first time,” they said. One of us convoyed by a policeman was allowed to go to the shop and buy food: after the tea in train we refused to drink or eat anything given to us by the authorities.

After that the trials, and the acquittals of the four Belarusians took place. I am thankful to all who helped me and my friends to be released: to those who spent a sleepless night distributing information about our detention all over the world; to my friends in Kyiv (especially to Serhiy, Viktor, Vlad, Marko) and in Minsk, who struggled for us; to Ukrainian media, including the Fifth Channel, the headquarters of the President Yushchenko, lawyer Olexandr Trofimov, OSCE legal consultant Yuliya Iovenko, and officers of the local police department of Repki, who had to listen to hundreds of phone calls from all over the worlds, and who were the hostages of the situation, as they had to keep us, answering for villains of Yanukovych, whose power fortunately ended without having started.