Actor Aliaksandr Reznik Has to Retire from Theater of Belarusian Dramaturgy after 10-day Arrest

Aliaksandr Reznikau said the following in his interview to Charter’97: ‘I was tried by Minsk Pershamaiski Borough Court for alleged shouting anti-presidential slogans. It is ridiculous! That evening I was to play in the theater. I asked them to permit me a telephone call there. They answered: ‘You’ll play in the prison cell’. Which I did.

We were taken to the detention center in Akrestsin Street and had to stand there in snow, facing the wall, for two hours. We asked the police to take us to the building, but the ‘kind’ policemen said that in the case was didn’t feel cold standing in the square we could bear it. We weren’t fed for more than a day. Only the next morning we were given soup and tea. There were ten of us in 39th cell of the new barrack, whereas the cell was intended to house five prisoners. Recently we have met again, outside the detention center. We recollected how cold it was in the cell, how we slept on the wooden plank-beds. All of us were there together and we can’t be stopped!

When I came to the theater after the imprisonment the stage director Valery Anisenka said: ‘I don’t need any politics in the theater. I spent five years washing clean from Mazynski. I have never been involved into politics, though I survived all Soviet-time leaders. That’s why you’d rather write the application for retirement or you’ll be disemployed for violation of the working law.’