Orsha: Artist Ales Pushkin Declares Hunger Strike in Remand Prison

11.09.2007. Tags: administrative trials, actions, hunger-strike.
Source: Charter`97.

On 10 September the trial over Ales Pushkin and an activist of the Young Front Aliaksei Yanusheuski started, but was delayed when they demanded advocatory services. The defendants were taken to a remand prison. Ales Pushkin has declared a hunger-strike of protest.

At present Pushkin and Yanusheuski are charged with a petty theft. ‘They are accused of an attempt to steal a state flag from the police department’, explained a member of the organizing committee for the establishment of the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party Aliaksei Shein. ‘Pushkin confesses having thrown the flag out of the window of the police department of Orsha. However, at the trial he stated that his action are disrespect to the state symbols and fall under the Criminal Code, not the Administrative Code. The judge ignored this remark.’

The trial will continue at 9 a.m. on 11 September.

Bear in mind that on 8 September about 30 persons were detained at the informal celebration of the 493^rd anniversary of the Orsha battle. On 9 September 17 more people were detained near the village of Hatskaushchyna in Orsha district of Vitsebsk oblast. Among them there were a Homel bard Andrei Melnikau and Ales Pushkin. When the policemen started releasing the detainees out of the police department somebody threw out the state flag out of a window. Then the policemen started again detaining those who they had just released. Finally they accused in it Pushkin and Yanusheuski.