Ales Pushkin: I Had to Visit the Battle of Orsha Field after Release
On September 16 artist Ales Pushkin and youth activist Aliaksei Yanusheuski were released from jail. They served the sentence of seven days under the charge of disorderly conduct when they had been detained at the music festival “Battle of Orsha -- 2007”.
At 11 a.m. Minsk and Orsha activists came to meet Ales Pushkin and Aliaksei Yanushkevich from the detention center.
However, the policemen, trying to prevent the meeting, brought the artist and the youth activist to the railway station, well before they should have been released. Pro-democratic activists managed to find them already on the train.
At the request of Ales Pushkin, his friends drove him to Krapiuna field, where the festival was to take place a week ago.
That day no one stopped the activists on the road to the historical places where the Battle of Orsha was held in 1514. There have been no signs of the mine clearing group that allegedly worked here for three days.
Ales Pushkin said he really wanted to visit the place before his departure: “Every one of us has wife and kids, but we also have Belarus, and priorities which every one chooses for oneself. That’s why I go to Krapiuna field first. And then I will go home to my family, to work in the garden and paint pictures, and to create stained-glass windows in Talachyn Catholic church”.
