Youth activists beaten by riot squad police at ‘Beatles’ Festival’

During the musical festival ‘Beatles Forever’ which was held in Lahoisk on Saturday, 7 June, several youngsters raised white-red-white flags. Several minutes after this raged riot squad policemen burst into the crowd and started beating the youngsters, among whom there was an activist of the Young Front Vadzim Khaniauka.

According to Vadzim, the policeman who saw him on the way, pushed him in the chest and threw him down on the ground. At the same time the policemen detained the youth activist Vital Izotau, who was holding the flag.

Soon after, when Vadzim went out of the crowd, this very policeman ran towards him and demanded that he showed his bag.

‘There were several stickers ‘European Belarus’ in my bag’, said Vadzim Khaniauka. ‘He asked me what it was. I answered that these were stickers. ‘Stickers’, he said, ‘I see it myself that its stickers!’ Then the policeman kicked me in the knees as hard as he could. When I fell down, he started beating me. There was no one near, so nobody could help me.’

Besides, the riot squad policeman took away from Vadzim the certificate of a member of the Free Trade Union in Belarus, though it is an officially registered organization.