Search in Bus of Belarusian Pilgrims :: Charter'97 :: News

On January 3 in the evening a bus with Christian youth was detained at the customs office in Brest (at the Belarusian-Polish border). Belarusian frontier hoards held a search in the bus. They checked all personal possessions and demanded explanation from participants of the pilgrimage. A report was drawn up against Viktar Syanko, an owner of a few copies of the newspaper “Nasha Niva”. Newspapers were confiscated and sent to the prosecutor’s office for examination. The newspapers are to be checked for “anti-state information” in their articles.

There where more than 40 passengers in the bus. The bus was stopped at the border for about 6 hours. Young Belarusian Christians, Catholics and Evangelicals, were on their way back from Zagreb, Croatia. They had taken part in the famous European ecumenical meeting of young adults (Taize meeting) in Zagreb.

“They searched virtually everything, published notes, Bibles, books, notebooks, pictures,” Dzyanis Sadouski, a pilgrim, said. “I regard it as a pressure on young active Christians. It is obvious that the election campaign provokes such maladaptive inadequate actions. I have reason to suppose that were expected on the border, and it was a planned action”.