Human rights activists under surveillance

On 13 October in the afternoon officers of Stoubtsy district police department stopped the car driven by the deputy head of Belarusian Helsinki Committee Tatsiana Hatsura. ‘We need to check what you carry in the car,’ said a policeman. Tatsiana had some bags with fiction literature with her.

After a detailed examination the policeman told the human rights activist that he did not know why he was ordered to check her luggage and documents. He put down her passport data and let her go.

The human rights activist was returning to Minsk from Stoubtsy, where she had visited her mother. ‘It was a sudden travel for me. My middle son was ill and I had taken him to the grandma. I also decided to drive a part of the books that were at my grandmother’s to my Minsk apartment. Only my neighbors seemed to have seen how I loaded the books. Pitifully enough, they did not know that there was only fiction – otherwise they would not have made additional trouble for the police. In general, it is quite amusing to feel that ‘big brother’ is watching you,’ says Tatsiana Hatsura.