Detentions of Vitsiebsk action participants :: Charter'97 :: News

June 22, representatives of political parties gathered at Will Square in Vitsiebsk to express their protest against the sentences set towards two opposition leaders - Paval Seviarynets and Mikola Statkievich. After 40 minutes the militia officers and OMON agents broke up the action.

About twenty representatives of oppositional parties came to Will Square. There were portraits of Mikola Statkievich and Paval Seviarynets fixed on the chests of practically all the participants. Moreover, Paval Seviarynets and his mother Tatsiana Seviarynets also came to the Square to meet with the fellow-townspeople.

Three cars with militiamen and several OMON officers appeared in 40 minutes after the beginning of the action. For some minutes the action participants managed to hold the force of the militiamen who were ordering to break up. The parties’ members started disseminating only after head of the “Malady Front” Yanis Chuchman was pushed into a militia car.

Khrystafor Zhaliapau, a friend of the BNF party, was detained at the moment when having left the Square he was moving along Lenina Street. He was grabbed by the hands and also pushed violently into a car. However, being detained in the Chygunachny District, he was brought to the Kastrychnitski District Department of the Ministry of Interior. Having noticed this breach, his party colleagues tried to telephone to the prosecutor’s office of the Kastrychnitski District. At this time the mobile telephone was taken away from Khrystafor Zhaliapau for hinder him from telling anyone what was going on in the militia office.

Yanis Chuchman and Khrystafor Zhaliapau were exonerated half past 10 p.m. Minutes were drawn up on both of them for spreading leaflets without output with the contents inflicting damage to the state order and public peace.

Now the minutes drawn up on Yanis Chuchman and Khrystafor Zhaliapau will be considered by the District Administrative Commission, as radio Liberty repots.