Rally on St. Valentine’s Day Not Sanctioned in Minsk :: Charter'97 :: News

Minsk city executive committee has denied sanctioning a traditional rally on St. Valentine’s Day to the Young Front organization. The BelaPAN has been informed about that by one of the activists of the youth democratic movement Nasta Palazhanka.

As said by her, the reason for the denial was that the applicants hadn’t indicated their places of work in the letter of request. “This formality was a pretext for unconditional refusal for staging the rally. They haven’t even sent us to Bangalore Square”, Nasta Palazhanka said. She also said that the organizers of the rally had been summoned to a conversation to a police department. They were invited to the police department by the phone, but they refused to go there without a summons.

However, the young activists state that the rally is to take place anyhow. As said by one of the leaders, Zmitser Khvedaruk, no arrests could prevent the action. “The rally with a slogan: “Belarus to Europe!” is coinciding with the rhetoric of the Belarusian head of the state who speaks in favour of normalization of relations with the EU,” Zmitser Khvedaruk believes.