Hrodna: Delayed trials

Twenty one people were detained on Friday in Hrodna for a picket near the regional executive committee to protect a Polish school.

One of them, an activist of the Union of Poles Igor Bancer (Ihar Bantsar), was sentenced to 13 days in custody. He was brutally beaten by police during the detention. The rest detained people expected trials on June 4, but they were not held.

Nine picketers expected trials. Policemen drew up reports against them and promised to phone on Monday. Some of the detained people came to court voluntary, but were told their reports had not been received yet. Police said to wait, but did not specified the date.

Journalist Hrazhyna Shalkevich, who expected the trial to be held today, told Radio Svaboda there were some ordinary passers-by among the detainees: a young man came for the national cultures festival, saw the mob, came closer to ask what was happening and got detained. Another ma, a Hrodna dweller, tried to defend the woman as they were pulled by hands by people  in mufti.

“There were old women, 70 and 80 years old, who were pulled into a bus. Old people were later forced out of the bus. People were beaten. They have torn clothes and broken umbrellas,” Shalkevich says.

Andrzej Poczobut, a member of the Council of the unrecognized Union of Poles, who was summoned to police on the day of the picket and left there for three hours, said after the picket it was the most brutal crackdown on members of the Union of Poles he had ever seen.

“Such a cruel reaction from the authorities was a surprise. People were beaten, Igor Bancer suffered a lot. It was the first time police have dispersed members of the Union of Poles of Belarus so brutally,” the journalist says.