Human rights defenders hold action “My first word”

On February 5, human rights defenders from the human rights centre Viasna carried out an action of solidarity with the anarchists who were illegally sentenced to short jail terms.

Six activists of the anarchist movement, including Aliaksandr Frantskevich, were detained in the last few days. All of them were sentenced to from 10 to 25 days in custody. The activists were charged with failure to obey orders of police officers (article 23.4), two of them were charged with swearing (article 17.1, disorderly conduct). There are grounds to suppose that they were detained for protests against ungrounded arrests of people at a punk concert at Piraty club, Viasna reports.

“We regard the arrests as a classic example of arbitrary detentions. We express our solidarity with the people who were thrown behind bars illegally. We protest against the practice of using arbitrary detentions in Belarus that became systematic and turned into a tool of political repression against active citizens,” Viasna's deputy head Valiantsin Stefanovich says.