Journalists were not admitted to the ballad song festival “The Battle of Orsha-2010”

Journalists were kept at the police station till late night on September, 12.

Vitebsk journalist Elena Stepanava was detained in the car of the Deputy Head of BNF party Grigory Kostuseu, and both were directed to Dubrovensky district police department. The reporter of the sites belarda.org and “People's news of Vitebsk” Ihar Kazmerchak were transported to Orsha ROVD, BAJ press service reports.

The journalists were heading for the ballad song festival to write about the event. They came to the police station together with several tens of other detainees. Police officers were ordered not to let anybody in the vicinity of Krapivenskoye field, where the Belarusian ballad song and poetry festival in the honor of the historical victory of the army of Grand Duchy of Lithuania over Moscow principality on September, 8, 1514 is held on the first weekend of September from 1992.

The resident of Orsha Ihar Kazmerchak was released in an hour after his detention; the data of his passport were copied. Elena Stepanava together with Grigory Kostuseu was kept about two hours.

Policemen stated that a murder had taken place in the district and they were obliged to detain all suspicious persons.

The both rejected to give written explanations, because they were not informed whether they had been officially detained and on what grounds. Grigory Kostuseu left such a record in the police book of complaints, as it was evident, that policemen executed the detention according to some order, without essential grounds: at first they were ordered to go simply to ROVD and only in an hour and a half an officer of the State Automobile Inspectorate was called, who drew up a report on a traffic violation. Kostuseu’s car had curtains at the windows; he received a written warning for this.

The journalists did not manage to get to the festival, which this year was uncommonly not crowded: all night the police patrolled the road Orsha-Dubrouna, checking every car and documents of the passes-by. Both journalists were kept at the police station till late night, and the public transport stopped operating at the time of their release.