BISS demands to stop the prosecution of scientific work

The Board of Belarusian Institute of Strategic Studies issued a statement to condemn the jail term imposed on the institute’s academic director, Alyaksey Pikulik.

In the statement, the BISS Board accused the authorities of waging an intimidation campaign against Mr. Pikulik as far back as January 2011 when the man had his laptop computer seized by Belarusian border guards at the Lithuanian border. On April 6, 2012, police seized Mr. Pikulik’s passport, the BISS Board said, linking the campaign to the political analyst’s professional activities.

The BISS Board has urged all independent political experts to “continue their activities, carry on with unbiased surveys of Belarus and remain committed to maintaining high professional standards despite intimidation.”

Mr. Pikulik was arrested in the courtyard in front of his house in Minsk on the evening of May 31. The following day he was sentenced to five days in jail on a charge of using obscene language.

The policemen who arrested the man acted as witnesses in court. They said that Mr. Pikulik was shouting obscenities in the courtyard and, when seeing them approaching him, began to insult them.

Mr. Pikulik denied their statement as untrue. He said that the two officers just came up and ordered him to follow them to a police station.

Mr. Pikulik, a professor at European University in St.Petersburg, has been unable to travel abroad after police took away his passport on April 6.

On that day, road traffic police pulled over Mr. Pikulik’s car in Minsk and ordered him to drive to the city’s Tsentralny district police station for an identification procedure. His passport and iPad were seized as police officers said that the passport may have been forged.

On May 11, Mr. Pikulik visited the police department, where he was told that the passport would be examined for one more month.