Police to bring no case on defilement of BPF office door

05.05.2008. Tags: Belarusian Popular Front, act of vandalism.
Source: Charter`97.

The office of the Belarusian Popular Front party (BPF) received an answer from the police to the complaint ‘on the facts on window damage and drawing inscriptions on office’s door’.

The police officers decided these actions were not ‘gross disturbance of public peace’ and therefore there was no need to bring a criminal case on the fact.

It should be reminded that unknown people broke window in the BPF office, wrote ‘Minsk is Russian city’ and drew a swastika at night 30 March. Moreover, leaflets of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party were found out on the scene.

It was found out that a Police Academy cadet Kruhlik, who was walking around night Minsk with his wife, saw three men near the BPF office ‘drawing on the door’. Moreover, he heard the sound of alarm. Kruhlik phoned to the police and informed them about the crime. Meanwhile, the offenders went away: one of them went to the metro, and the other two took tram 3 to Serabranka district, the Salidarnasc newspaper writes.

At the same time, in their answer the police write: ‘Tracing activities have failed to found out a person, who wrote an inscription and damaged the window... There are no elements of a crime, provided by article 339 of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Belarus in the actions of unknown people. The examination showed these actions were not directed to disturbance of public peace and didn’t cause public disorder.’

Here the Belarusian policy of double standards can be clearly seen. When somebody writes offences on the doors of oppositional parties, he/she is let go, while the Young Front activist Artur Finkevich served 2 years of personal restraint for having written ‘Long Live Belarus’ on the walls in Minsk.