Chernobyl Path-2013: detentions, beatings and 1.000 people at the march

photos by tut.by,svaboda.org, belaruspartisan.org, euroradio.fm

The authorities have allowed the traditional procession; however, they couldn’t resist the opportunity to demonstrate force.

The move was preceded by an operation to supress the route of Anatol Liabedzka, the chairman of the United Civic Party and Aleksandr Borozenko and Anastasia Evmen, “Belsat” journalists who were covering this event. After some time the journalists were released and their video was deleted. Liabedzka was released, too, but then was detained again; eventually, the politician managed to arrive just in time to the manifestation in Bangalore Square.

Mikalai Ulasevich, an activist of the antinuclear campaign, has been detained by police in Maladzechna.

At the threshold of “Chernobyl Path” the actions of police got focused on the activists from Minsk.

At about 6 p.m. the police blocked the doors at the flat of Tatiana Novikava, one of the organizers of the event and the coordinator of the anti-nuclear movement. Iryna Sukhij, the chairperson the “Eco House” as well as Volha Kanavalava, Vasil Semyanikhin and Kanstantsin Kirylenka, the activists who were together with Sukhij at the moment when she was leaving her apartment were detained, too. On the pretext of the increased frequency of residential burglary cases, Sukhij together with the others was directed to the Pershamaiski district police station to be left there for three hours for identification.

The move itself has begun from the column of about thousand people that started its way with traditional slogans about Chernobyl and demands to stop the building of a nuclear power plant in the Astravets. In Bangalore Square it was about three hundred people who waited for the resolution to be promulgated. During the manifestation information about the beating of anarchist Igar Truhanovich and the detention of four more anarchists appeared. The activist, stained with blood, was put in the car. Later Iryna Arahouskaya and Aksana Rudovich, Nasha Niva journalists, who were making a video that demonstrated the beating of Truhanovich, have been detained. The journalists were left off after an hour.

After the manifestation was finished, the activists of “European Belarus” Aliaksandr Tarnagurski and Zmicier Charniak were detained.

What does the resolution of the current action requires:

- to stop the building of the nuclear power plant in Astravets;

- to provide the truthful and full information about the consequences of Chernobyl catastrophe and to carry out their full-scale research;

- to renew the law on social protection of citizens who suffered from the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as well as to take action on its practical implementation, i.e. to provide the people from the polluted territories with an opportunity to resettle, and to stop the usage of the polluted territories in household;

- to give citizens real possibility to control consumer products and the environment with dosimeter.

There are political requirements as well:

- The condition for the realization of the environmental rights is the renovation of freedom of speech, assembly, association, free and open elections. In the current situation people are deprived of the possibility to decide what their environment, city, country are to be. We call for the full democratization of Belarus, its executive and legislative authority. The first step to do in this connection is to release the political prisoners.