Young oppositionists still forcefully drafted into army
Andrei Tsianiuta
Militiamen handed in a summons calling to appear the military enlistment office to “Young Front” activist from Homel Andrus Tsyanyuta on Tuesday.
As Radio Svaboda reports, the activist must appear in the military enlistment office at 9 a.m. on July 24 for “drafting.”
“I was surprised to see this summons,” Andrus Tsyanyuta says. “Two years ago I got a determent till 2012 because I’m a correspondence-course student. I think the authorities want to isolate active young people with the help of the army.”
The youth activist marked his 22nd birthday in May. He is a third-year student of the correspondence department of Bryansk Agricultural Academy specialising in mechanical engineering. He has the right for determent.
In September 2007, Tsyanyuta was arrested for 10 days for spreading leaflets in support of straight-A student Zmitser Zhaleznichenka, expelled from university.
Later the KGB directorate for the Homel region said he was the suspected in a criminal case of activity on behalf of unregistered organization “Young Front”. The flat, where the activist and his parents live, was searched, a computer was seized and Tsyanyuta was fined and arrested for 7 days allegedly for hooliganism and disobedience to militia.
Tsyanyuta was fiend again this February for a picket near the Homel region executive committee and a banner “KGB expelling us from work – who can defend us?” He and other youth activist was on hunger strike of solidarity with entrepreneurs from Vaukavysk Mikalai Autukhovich, Yury Lyavonau, and Uladzimir Asipenka, who are kept in pre-trial detention center #1 of the main militia department of the Mink city executive committee since February 2009.
We remind that many youth activists were forcefully drafted into the army in Belarus. Leader of “The BPF Youth” Franak Vyachorka and “Young Front” activists Ivan Shyla and Zmitser Khvedaruk have been up for military service this year. The young people were “drafted” forcefully, in spite of their health condition making them unfit for military service.
