Old Questions Provoke New Repression
09.12.2001
Today in dozens of countrys regions there has taken part an action, dedicated
to the 52nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The people lined up in long chains, holding in hands portraits of the deceased
under mysterious circumstances Anatoly Maisenya and Gennady Karpenko, disappeared
Yuri Zakharenko, Viktor Gonchar, Anatoly Krasovsky and imprisoned Andrei Klimov.
Around 400 people stood in an endless line along the Skarina prospect of Minsk
right opposite the KGB headquarters. Among them there had been over a hundred
ZUBR activists. In other towns, where the action took place, ZUBRs also took
an active part.
50 ZUBRs organized a chain in Gomel. Apart from them there were also activists
of BPF, Youth Front, United Civil Party and the Belarusian Freedom Party.
In Molodechno and Soligorsk ZUBRs actions were carried out together with the
United Civil Party. Joint actions of UCP and ZUBR were run in Novopolotsk and
Polotsk. In each of these towns around fifteen people lined up along central
streets.
Similar protests took place in the Mogilev region: Mogilev, Gorky, Bykhov and
Krychev.
Police detained in Borisov some of the ZUBR activists: Leonid Novitsky, Ludmila
Scherbakova and Alesya Yasuk, as well as the chairman of the Borisov branch of
the Vesna human rights center Dmitry Borodko. However, one hour later all of
them were set free.
In Grodno, where the action attracted some fifty folks, half of them being ZUBRs,
police captured Young Gromada female activist Svetlana Nekh, along with one more
person who had simply joined the picketers.
Brest law-enforcers attempted to disperse the chain of 30 ZUBRs, who refused
to subdue and sat on the pavement. Then the cops launched a manhunt, arresting
12. All twelve faced protocols under art.167/1 and 166 of the Administrative
code, after which all of them had been set free.
In Baranovichi thirty ZUBRs, having stood around an hour in a central street,
went for a rally. They approached the Baranovichi police station and installed
in the snow portraits of the disappeared people. Having done that the marchers
started walking home, but there ran out of the building a dozen of law-enforcers,
who arrested nine of the protesters. The guys were taken to the police ward.
The cops behaved very rudely. They cursed at the detainees and deliberately smoked
in their presence. When Julia Plotnikova asked to stop smoking, saying that shes
allergic for it, the uniformed man answered that its her problem and continued
to smoke. Julia felt almost fainting as a result. The protocols being drawn under
art.167/1 of the Administrative code, all the arrested folks were released.
ZUBRs claim that despite any repression they wont halt posing the questions
about mass disappearances to the authorities. They pledge readiness to do that
until the government sheds light on this matter.