Barysaw Businessmen Protest against Financial Pressure

11.02.2004.

According to Radio “Liberty”, on 9 February a strike of individual businessmen against financial pressurization took place in the city of Barysaw.

About 300 participants of the authorized meeting gathered at the city stadium. According to the organizers of the action, its holding was caused by escalation of the conflict between them and the authorities.

The leader of Barysaw businessmen Viktar Harbachow said that a new wave of economical pressurization had started as a result of the last-year Presidential decree about licensing and the governmental provision about new rules of market trade. According to him, Vitsebsk businessmen were the first ones to perceive it and expressed their protest by hunger strike.

The leader of the public association “Perspektyva” Anatol Shumchanka told Barysaw citizens about his meeting with the hunger-strikers and said that they needed to be supported. He said that otherwise any businessman in any region can turn bankrupt and therefore all Belarusian businessmen were to unite their efforts in resistance to the authorities. “Perspektyva” leader urged Barysaw businessmen to take an active part in the nationwide one-day strike, planned for 12 February.

Participants of Barysaw meeting adopted a resolution, in which they urged the authorities to set aside the new acts, aimed at liquidation of small business in Belarus.