Charnobylski Shliakh Organizers: Policemen to Answer for Everything :: Charter'97 :: News

Organizers of the rally Sharnobyski Shliakh are going to file a complaint to the prosecutor’s office for actions of Minsk police which during Charnobylski Shliakh protest rally exposed to danger lives and health of people while they marched along Surhanau Street. We are also set to appeal against illegal seizing of sound-amplifying equipment, against illegal arrests and beating up of people after the rally,” told one of the applicants for holding the rally, an activist of the Belarusian Popular Front party Yury Zyankovich.

The politician said that Minks city executive committee has really chosen a dangerous route for the demonstration. “However, we had an agreement with police that a street section of Surhanau Street where reconstruction works are carried out, we would walk on traffic area. And the fact that they started to force us out from the sidewalk, is revolting. It’s a violation of all our agreements! It means that a deputy head of the Main Department of Internal Affairs of Minsk city executive committee colonel Najdzenka who personally promised us to allow marching on traffic area, has no respect for his promise,” Yury Zyankovich said.

Another participant of the press-conference, a deputy chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front party Viktar Ivashkevich, has noted that the route of the march offered by applicants was safe. Applicants asked for permission to gather on Yakub Kolas square to go along Independence Avenue to the National Library.

“An absolutely normal and safe way to the library with no reconstruction works or destruction has been replaced by a dangerous road. It has been made with the aim of provocation. Other explanations are hardly possible,” Viktar Ivashkevich said.

As said by the deputy chairman of the Belarusian Popular Front party, in comparison with the last year “the regime has proceeded to mean and nasty tricks”. “To seize sound-amplifiers, to steal, in the direct sense of the word, megaphones from the organizers, to force people out to the place with railing and trenches, where it is forbidden to pass… Police is to answer for everything. We shall file complaints to the prosecutor’s office and to the court,” Viktar Ivashkevich said.