Police Detains Women Who Want to Meet with Lukashenka
On 22 October four female Babruysk citizens, Liubow Sankevich, Yeva Ustsimchuk, Halina Huseva and Yanina Awsianik came to Kastrychnitskaya Square of Minsk. They call their visit to Minsk their last chance to restore justice after they received refusals in all other administrative and court bodies. Since July 2001 they were writing applications to the Presidential administration in order to meet with Aliaksandr Lukashenka and tell him about the unjust actions of officials and courts that make them suffer. Liubow Sankevich wants to be rehabilitated at Babruysk Factory of tractor details and aggregates and has been keeping a hunger-strike of protest for 22 days already.
Her friend Halina Huseva has stopped hungering on the sixteenth day, when the state of her health rapidly deteriorated. Despite this, she has also come to Minsk. She demands from the “Fandok” enterprise to return the money she paid for the flat that the enterprise didn’t give her. Halina Huseva pointed out that she didn’t believe to anybody any more, even to Lukashenka.
Yeva Ustsimchuk demands rehabilitation at her working place, a flat and a worthy wage which A. Lukashenka promised before the election.
Yanina Awsianik brings up a disabled child and has been waiting for her turn to receive a flat for 17 years already.
These four women, tired of their life, decided to take a desperate step and hold an unauthorized action of protest opposite the building of Lukashenka’s administration. They unrolled a poster where it was written that they had been demanding a meeting with Lukashenka for three years already and stood with it for two minutes, before the guards came near.
The panic-stricken protesters tried to leave the square. Some other policemen beset their way to the tube. As a result, Liubow Sankevich and Yanina Awsianik were detained and taken to Minsk Tsentralny Police Board, together with Yury Hryhor’yew, an observer from Belarusian Helsinki Committee, the film producer Ruslan Zgolish and a correspondent of Radio “Liberty”.
According to Radio “Liberty”, in an hour the police released all of them without composing any reports. Ruslan Zgolich and Liubow Sankevich were taken to hospital by an ambulance. Both had high blood pressure. Despite being almost in the state of a hypertonic crisis, Liubow Sankevich declared to the police and the doctors that he would continue the hunger strike and refuse from medicines till she met with Lukashenka.
