Jeans shirt as a flag :: Charter'97 :: News

Reinforcing repressions, the Belarusian powers tried to stifle the street protest. For a long time those who came to the streets were beaten brutally, cast into prison, sacked and expelled.

Nevertheless the reinforcement of repressions has always lead to social resistance increase and strengthening of protest sentiments among the youth. That is why the majority of the people who came to Oktiabrskaya Square in Minsk on September 16 were the youth.

Beating, threatening and insulting the demonstrates, the SWAT officers snatched the portraits of the missing politicians from the hands of the action participants and forced them out from the Square. Militia officers in mufti grabbed the portraits, tore them into pieces and trampled with their feet. Many “ZUBR” activists were beaten.

This time, however, the youth were not to give up. The activists linked their arms and endeavored to resist the onslaught. As a result, two parallel ranks appeared in the Square - the SWAT and the “ZUB” - which did not move and spent some minutes in silence staring at each other.

The SWAT officers managed to force the young people out from the Square surrounding them only. Several times the ousted demonstrates came back to rejoin the rank to be forced out again.

When after an encounter with the SWAT the “zubrs” lost their flag, one of them - Nikita Sasim - took off his jeans shirt, fixed it to the flagstaff and started wavering it, scanning “Long Live Belarus!”. The appeal was supported by the others.

“Near the Square people in mufti took the national white-red-white flag from a “ZUBR” activist. We still had one more flag, but it was lost during the cleansing. And then I decided to take off my jeans shirt and make a flag out of it,” - Sasim told later.

On that very day Nikita Sasim was hospitalized with the diagnosis of craniocerebral trauma; also his kidneys were injured.

“Obviously, the youth has become more active recently. There are more and more people ready to join “ZUBR” all over the country, which inspires us. The dictatorship will not manage to suppress the resistance movement. We are absolutely sure that those guilty of our friends’ having being beaten will be punished,” - Alexandr Atroshchankau, the “ZUBR” press-secretary said.