Special Police Forces Disrupt Yury Khadyka’s Picket

08.10.2004.

On 6 October the police detained three proxies of Yury Khadyka at agitation picket. According to Khadyka, one of them, Larysa Leparskaya, was taken to Minsk Pershamayski Borough Board of Internal Affairs for “illegal” picketing. There the police searched the woman and found several dozens of stickers “Say NO to Lukashenka!” and composed on her a report for distribution of printed materials without issue data.

-- I don’t understand what they considered as “distribution”, -- said Khadyka. Larysa Leparskaya held one sticker in her hands and didn’t stick it anywhere. Besides, what issue data are to be printed on fly-sheets?

After Leparskaya special police forces detained two more proxies, Siarhey Shynkevich andViktar Lisowski and took them to the same Pershamayski BBIA. The policemen stated that the detainees held a picket with the use of prohibited symbols (meaning white-red-white flags). They searched Shynkevich and Lisowski as well, but didn’t find anything except for electoral fly-sheets of the candidate.

-- Police lawlessness is boundless, -- says Yury Khadyka. They need to detain, but how they can if a man doesn’t violate anything? So, it’s necessary to invent a reason and they groundlessly claimed the picket was illegal. Afterwards police captain confessed it and apologized.

Yury Khadyka has already composed complaints to Central Election Commission, Minsk Pershamayski Borough Prosecutor’s Office and OSCE/BDIHR mission on monitoring of the parliamentary election in Belarus concerning the detention of his proxies by the police.

The intimidation continued on 7 October. Crew-cut guys in plain clothes, some of whom introduced themselves as workers of special police forces, demanded to stop pickets, threatening to detain picketers otherwise. They were again irritated by white-red-white flags.

Press-service of the BPF Party