More detentions in Homel
Vasil Paliakou, Chair of the Homel regional organization of the United Civil Party
On 26 July the Homel police detained Vasil Paliakou, Chairperson of the Homel regional organization of the United Civil Party, Yury Hlushakou, first Deputy Chairperson of the Green Party, a civil activist Larysa Shchyrakova, a member of the Belarusian Popular Front Valery Repnin and a representative of the Human Rights Center Viasna, Anatol Paplauny.
All of them handed out postcards of the Coordinative Council of the United Democratic Forces of the Homel region with congratulations on an anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of Belarus.
The activists were detained by policemen in plain clothes, taken to a police bus and guarded to the Tsentralny District Police Department of Homel.
Earlier, the police also detained a UCP activist Uladzimir Niapomniashchykh for wearing a T-shirt with the inscription ‘For Belarus without Lukashenka’. The police drew up a violation report and then released the activist.
According to Mr. Paplauny, the confiscation of the postcards was conducted with numerous violations of the law. ‘In particular, there were no witnesses and the content of the postcards wasn’t described in the confiscation report’.
The human rights defender also emphasizes that the detention was conducted by the policemen who had detained civil activists on 16 September 2009, during an action dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the abduction of Viktar Hanchar and Anatol Krasouski. All the detainees had been sentenced to pay huge fines that time.
