20 books by Zianon Pazniak seized from Pavel Seviarynets

The books will be delivered to the Hrodna City Executive Committee for an examination, which is to figure out if the books are extremist.

Customs officers seized 20 books by Zianon Pazniak from Pavel Seviarynets, a co-head of the organising committee of the Belarusian Christian Democracy party, who was crossing the Belarusian-Polish border at Bruzgi checkpoint.

As Seviarynets told BelaPAN news agency, customs officers ordered him to get off the bus heading to Minsk on October 13. Seviarynets underwent a personal search. “I was at the customs office until 3 a.m. I found people that gave me a ride to Hrodna. I then took the train to Minsk,” Seviarynets says. He explained that he switched off his mobile phone at the customs office and forgot to switch it on, so his phone was unavailable in the morning.

“The books were seized. They will be sent to the executive committee in Hrodna for an examination to find out if they contain extremism,” Seviarynets says. “But I am happy that employees of the Hrodna executive committee will read books by Zianon Pazniak.”

He plans to appeal against the actions by the customs officers. “They gave me a heap of papers [in connection with the seizure of books]. I thinks we'll file a complaint,” he said.