Minsk: police disperse action of solidarity with Polish minority
On 16 February the riot police dispersed the action of solidarity on Kastrychnitskaya Square in central Minsk. Some of the action participants were detained preventively on the way to the square. Riot policemen also prevented journalists from making photos. As soon as they saw a camera, they ringed the journalist. In some cases, they even tried hitting on cameras.
It is already the third action dispersed by police this February. People were thrown in police busses, guarded to the police department and released without giving any charges.
At 6.p. Kastrychnitskaya Square was ringed by several tens of riot policemen. Most of them stood at the entrance to the subway. As soon as some youngsters appeared in the square, the policemen ran up and demanded that the people showed their passports. In several seconds, young activists were detained and guarded to the police station in the subway.
Several people tried to line up with portraits of political prisoners and a banner in the Polish language ‘For our and your freedom!’. The police assaulted them and snatched the portraits and the banner from the demonstrators’ hands.
When Artur Finkevich, leader of the Young Belarus, addressed the present people, to policemen ran up to him and started reading through the loudspeaker the new article of the Administrative Code concerning the consummation of alcohol at work that would come into action on 23 February.
All in all, 24 people were detained. Five of them were released on the way to the police department, the rest were let go in three hours.
List of detainees (incomplete):
- Yauhen Afnahel
- Liavon Barshcheuski
- Yuliya Darashkevich
- Palina Dziiakava
- Mikalai Dzemidzenka
- Artur Finkevich
- Uladzislau Ihnatovich
- Palina Kuryianovich
- Yuliya Mikhailava
- Iryna Piatrova
- Pavel Prakapovich
- Hanna Shkaruba
- Maksim Viniarski
- Uladzimir Yaromenok
- Pavel Yukhnevich
