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“Authorities To Get To Know What Women's Riot Is!”

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“Authorities To Get To Know What Women's Riot Is!”

In the evening on October 24, the townspeople, who are concerned about the fate of the park of Partisan Glory, gathered at the monument to Uladzimir Karatkevich in Vitsebsk.

The reason for the meeting was the Vitsebsk authorities’ proposal ofto downsize the territory, where the odious Sophia Cathedral is to be built.

According to the newspaper Vitsebsk Courier, as it was stated in the response to the Vitsebsk residents’ collective appeal, defending the park, the new project provided for cutting down fewer trees. But do the townspeople agree with such a decision?

The fence has not been taken away, but the construction trailer, near which the meeting of executive committee representatives with the citizens was held on October 13, has disappeared. The trees, which have been cut down, are still lying on the ground in the park. The construction has been put on hold.

– It’s not a capital city here, so the St. Sophia Cathedral’s construction is inappropriate in Vitsebsk! – the woman, who said to be an employee of the Medical University, is outraged. – The environment should not be destroyed, we will defend our right to the park. The authorities will get to know, what a woman's riot is!

Chekhau street resident Klara Mikalayeuna got ready questions to the executive committee. She wants to know how many trees will be cut down after adjusting the Cathedral’s project, when the community of the St. Sophia Cathedral has been created, which documents indicate the construction financing sources.

Green Network portal representative Yauhen Mikhasiuk and lawyer Tatsiana Sinitsa came from Minsk to offer help to Vitsebsk residents in dealing with the situation. They listened with interest to the citizens, who were really afraid, that a huge amount of green space in the park of Partisan Glory would be destroyed during the cathedral’s construction.

– There are two options, – Yauhen said, – you may be against the construction of the cathedral in essence, for the park remained untouched, or agree to the construction of the church, but with cutting down the minimum number of trees.

– We have been deceived once already, – one of the women, who had come to the meeting, said indignantly, – they promised that after the Victory Square’s reconstruction, the trees would remain, and what happened in the end? So we do not want the situation be the same again.

Lawyer Tatsiana Sinitsa offers citizens to collect signatures against cutting down trees in the park. In her opinion, about 10 000 people (about 10% of the total population of Kastrychnitski district, where the cathedral is to be built) have to sign the petition (not in the electronic form, but, as they say, live). Then it will make sense.

There is another option: to appeal to the local council of deputies to initiate a referendum. However, such a proposal has been already made by human rights activist Leanid Svetsik. He has received no reply yet.

– We are glad that the city council has listened to our opinion regarding the reduction of the number of trees to be cut down in the park, – Viktoryja Dashkevich, a Green Portal correspondent, says, – and we are ready for a dialogue with the authorities, because we want to save the park. Of course, it is better to appoint another public discussion of the new cathedral’s construction project. And we want to know the opinion of the Vitsebsk eparchy. What do clergymen think about the reduction of the territory where the cathedral is to be built? And is it possible to establish public control over the construction process?

The citizens intend to ask all these and other questions about the St. Sophia Cathedral at the meeting with Deputy Head of the Vitsebsk city executive committee Department of Architecture and Urban Leanid Bahdanau in Dukhauski Kruhlik on October 27.

We recall that last week it was reported that after strong protests of hundreds of Vitsebsk residents, the city authorities and the Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate frozen the construction of the Polatsk St. Sophia Cathedral’s copy.

In response, the supporters of the cathedral’s construction threatened to go to Lukashenka with a sacred procession through the whole Belarus.

After that, the Vitsebsk city council offered a compromise solution: to move the construction closer to the bank of the Dzvina and to build a smaller church.

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