Vitsiebsk Chygunachny district court fined local opposition activist Barys Khamaida with 100 basic values (BR 310 thousand) for picketing on July 7. B.Khamaida came to the city center where the arts festival “Slavonic Bazaar” is being held these days, holding a poster dedicated to the 125th anniversary of Yanka Kupala, the classical poet of the Belarusian literature.
The following lines from Kupala’s poem “Don’t think this way” were written on the poster decorated with the national Belarusian ornament: “Don’t think this way, that we’ll be pressed by the trouble. You should know that the sorrow will soon go away and the lightning of life will flash double.” Khamaida was keeping a new issue of the newspaper “Nasha Niva” consecrated to the anniversary of the Belarusian Piasniar (bel. “singer”) with Kupala’s huge photograph printed on the front page.
The opposition activist was detained in approximately 50 minutes. The court regarded Khamaida’s actions as illegal picket.
“The powers’ hypocrisy is obvious: they talk much about Kupala in their official speeches, but they give penalties for a poster with his photograph, - the opposition activist told BelaPAN. - With my poster I wanted to draw the public’s attention to this great day. And the people who came to “Slavonic Bazaar” eat patties, kebabs, drink beer and don’t care about anything… Kupala wrote this poem in 1906, but the thing he predicted will turn real, I’m sure.”
According to Khamaida, he had been detained for a while before that, in the evening of July 6. Having explained that the head of state was to arrive to Vitsiebsk for the grand opening of “Slavonic Bazaar”, the police officers let the oppositionist go with no protocols drawn.
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