“My First Word”: action of solidarity held by human rights defenders

On February 5, members of the HRC “Viasna” held an action of solidarity with activists of the anarchist movement who had been groundlessly sentenced to short-term arrests.

Recently, the police have detained six activists of the anarchist movement, including Aliaksandr Frantskevich. All detainees were sentenced to arrest terms of 10-25 days under Article 23.4 of the Code of Administrative Offenses. Moreover, two of them received charges under Article 17.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (“disorderly conduct”). There are reasons to believe that the reason for the detentions are actions against groundless arrests of participants of a punk concert in the rock-club “Pirates”.

“We regard these arrests as a classical example of arbitrary detention and express our solidarity with the people who have been groundlessly deprived of liberty. In this way we protest against the practice of the use of arbitrary detentions in Belarus which have acquired a systemic nature and constitute one of the kinds of political reprisals against public and political activists,” explained the deputy chair of the Human Rights Centre “Viasna” Valiantsin Stefanovich.