Liberalization in Lukashenka’s way

08.09.2008. Tags: Young Front, arrest, boycott.

The authorities continue using mean methods of pressing the political opposition. If earlier democratic activists were arrested on false accusations of allegedly ‘using of foul language in public’, the article ‘drinking alcohol in public’ has been used for the first time against a Young Front activist Vadzim Khaniauka.

However, the police didn’t take into consideration that the accusation is more than absurd, because the arrested Young Front activist is a Christian who abstains from alcohol.

As the Charter’97 press center has already informed, Vadzim Khanyauka was arrested by the police on 5 September at 11 am. The guy managed to send an SMS to his friends, saying he was being guarded to Tsentralny district police department of Minsk. After three hours Vadzim’s friends began to address the police, the KGB and court, but were told that his location was unknown. It is known that Vadzim Khanyauka was invited to the KGB for a conversation two weeks ago.

Nothing was known about the activist for 13 hours. Only at midnight the police said that Vadzim Khaniauka was in prison in Akrestin Street, as he had been arrested for 15 days.

On 7 September the apartment of a Young Front member Dzyanis Karnou was searched. When Karnou came home, the police were waiting for him in the apartment. As the Charter’97 press center learnt from the Young Front press service, the police broke (!) a lock and entered the apartment, though they didn’t have a search warrant.

Information materials, stickers and banners calling to boycott the oncoming parliamentary elections were seized from the apartment.

At the same time the western diplomats say a process of liberalization has begun in Belarus. It should be reminded that so far all talks about liberalization of the Belarusian regime ended in tightening repressions against the opposition and total crackdown on all sectors of public life.