European March: No Detentions

15.10.2007. Tags: European March, political disappearances.
Source: RFE/RL.

Half an hour before the beginning of the European March about three hundred people gathered on Kastrychnitskaya Square. They held the white-red-white flags and the flags of the European Union.

Aledxander Milinkevich addressed the crowd with the request to walk to the place where the gathering was permitted by the authorities – to the Academy of Sciences.

The demonstrators chanted: “Belarus to Europe!”, “Freedom to Political Priosners!”.

On Victory Square a group of youth activists went on the roadside. From Yakub Kolas Square the whole column of demonstrators walked on the road side to the Academy of Sciences.

Half of the crowd stopped at the Academy. About 300 people went further, to Naturalistau Street.

Small fights with policemen, who tried to return the crowd on the sidewalks, occurred along the whole way. When a road police car blocked the way for the column, several girls sat on the road, making all the other police cars stop. As a result of the fight, alarm lamp of one of the police cars was broken.

Youth activists said they wanted to express disagreement with the actions of the authorities who forbade the route they had asked for – from Kastrychnitskaya Square to the National Library.

Then the column went back, and the young people went to the Academy of Arts. Then they went along Surhanava Street to the Bangalore Square, where the bigger part of the European March participants gathered for an improvised rally.

After the event the young people went back down town, in small groups of several dozen people. For some time they walked in the center of the capital, in blue caps and white-red-white symbols.