Two Vitsebsk activists to be tried for protest against construction of Nuclear Power Plant
A member of the Conservative-Christian
Party "Belarusian Popular Front" Vital Kavalenka was
charged with violating the Law on Mass Events. A week ago similar
charges were given to his alley Yan Dziarzhautsau.
On 26 April
Dziarzhautsau and Kavalenka had come to the center of Vitsebsk with
the posters "Only an enemy of Belarus can construct an NPP
without the people's agreement" and "Dictator, if you build
Astravets you'll reap Chernobyl".
The activists deny
having held a mass event: they say they just used their legal right
to express their opinion. "Officers of Kastrychnitski District
Police Department of Vitsebsk came to my working place", said
Vital Kavalenka, "and asked whether I had come out with a poster
on 26 April. I said that I it was really so, but it wasn't a mass
event. This is my opinion and I will draw my arguments at
court."
The activists weren't informed about the date of
the trial and were told to wait for writs. They say that the police
didn't see them with the posters and could ground their charges only
on the photos which were uploaded to the Internet.
"We
were photographed by passers-by a lot. Some of them could phone to
the police. We had rolled down the posters and were going away when a
police car arrived. The head of the public order and prophylaxis
department of Vitsebsk Regional Executive Committee Andrei Ivanou
asked us to unroll the posters for a moment to see whether there were
no calls to coup d'etat. He didn't find anything of the kind. The
police didn't detain us, just followed us in their car, to make sure
we wouldn't unroll the posters in some other place," said Yan
Dziarzhautsau.
There were some precedents in Vitsebsk when
people were fined or sentenced to arrest on the basis of such
evidence as photos from the Internet.
