Detained Human Rights Activist Tamara Siarhei Charged With Theft

A coordinator of the initiative “Against lawlessness in prosecutor’s offices and courts”, detained today morning, is charged with theft.

A human rights activist Tamara Siarhei was charged with a theft, and together with six activists she was taken to the traffic police department, which is situated in the building of the railway station. The statement to police has been made by a girl, who came up to activists with policemen, Radio Racyja reports.

The detained were mostly pensioners, who had arrived from different cities: Babrujsk, Krupki, Minsk. They planned to come to the Palace of Independence, in order to meet with Lukashenka, as they had not been able to get an appointment with Lukashenka, and officials of his administration, whom they had addressed 42 times, but they didn’t receive and answer.

Tamara Siarhei says that she thinks her detention with the civic position of the activists of the initiative “Against lawlessness in prosecutor’s office and courts.”

“I was immediately charged with robbing a purse of the young girl, who created an impression of a person who is a drug or alcohol addict. It means charges under Article 205 of the Criminal Code – stealing a purse – from a person, who had not said her name, and who was shielded from us by Police Lieutenant Colonel Siarhei Harkavy and Warrant officer Makhnach. The provocation was controlled by Lieutenant Colonel Siarhei Harkavy, who used brutal force against me, in order to drag me into the police department.

This young girl first pointed at all of us, and then, in a few minutes, probably after some signal, pointed at me and said that I had stolen her purse. It means Article 205 of the Criminal Code, and it is serious. The search has taken place already, later procedural actions are to follow.

I treat this situation in the following way: in our second appeal to Aliaksandr Lukashenka we asked a question – what is to come next? For a number of years our rights for receiving substantive answers from courts and prosecutor’s office are violation. We asked: what will happen next, when he becomes the president of Belarus for the fifth time? And he has demonstrated what is to come next. I am treating that as the answer of the leader of the state. He has demonstrated that there are going to be provocations, and after that all discontented, who do not want to turn into lemmings, are to expect the road to Kurapaty – that’s my strong conviction,” the human rights activist said in her comment.

As Tamara Siarhei said later, in the police department a report was drawn up against her, she was charged under Article 206 of the Criminal Code (a theft). She had allegedly taken away $300 from a citizen Tarasava. After that she was released.

Tamara Siarhei called these events a special operation “Provocation.” Other participants of the incident were released from the police station without a report being drawn up. After her release, the human rights activist went to the administration of Lukashenka, where she filed a complaint against the actions that had been planned against her.

We remind that the activists of the civil initiative “Against lawlessness in prosecutor’s offices and courts”, in order to attract attention of the general public to the legal situation of citizens, held a picket in Freedom Square in Minsk on September 24.