Maksim Viniarski: I Consider My Detention Policeman’s Personal Revenge

The policemen seem to be too bothered with the action of solidarity with Dzmitry Paliyenka.

Coordinator of the “European Belarus” civil campaign Maksim Viniarski, who was detained by police on the night of August 10-11, has told this in an interview to charter97.org.

– What exactly happened that night? Why did they detain you?

– I was returning to my place of residence. Near the entrance to the building, I was stopped by policemen, they were waiting in the car with the lights off. They asked to show the documents. I did. After this, they claimed I looked like a person who committed a robbery in the Newspaper “Zviazda” Avenue. They said there was a necessity to go to the Maskouski district police department with them, in order the people whom I allegedly had robbed could identify me.

So we went to the district police department and there were no people whatsoever. The police took my cell phone, I couldn’t call anyone. We waited for some 30 minutes for the casualties to come, but they never arrived. Then the police suggested I should go somewhere with them and I obeyed. Before this, I wrote a claim in the name of their superior, that I didn’t understand what they had detained me for and why they had conducted no identification procedure if it had been a robbery.

Later, they delivered me to the examination aimed to detect whether there had been alcohol in my blood. I said I agreed to go through this examination but asked the policemen to introduce themselves and explain the grounds for my being there, as initially they had detained me for a robbery. This question was misunderstood by the staff of the medical establishment, they thought I refused from the examination. Everything that happened was filmed by the policemen with video cameras, and I told them I in no case refused to go through the medical examination. Still, the doctors interpreted my question as a refusal.

After that, they took me back to the Maskouski district police department, and within an hour they told me they were making a charge against me allegedly for being under the alcoholic influence, violating the people’s peace after 10 o’clock at night.

I said I disagreed with the charge. They took an interrogation protocol from me. In it, I described the events, including the fact that I actually hadn’t refused to go through an examination, that it were the doctors of the medical establishment who decided to give it up.

Later, they released me. Unfortunately I had no money on me and I spent half of the night getting home, to the outskirts of the city. I have caught cold and don’t feel well now.

I would like to point out that all the formalities since the moment of detention were fulfilled by the very same policeman who had made charges against me during the solidarity action near the remand prison #1, who had given testimony that he read at the websites charter97.org and Belarusian Partisan that it was the action of solidarity with Dzmitry Paliyenka. His name is Aleh Leanidavich Krakasevich.

This policeman kept on saying how discontent he was that his name had been mentioned in the media. He said he was outraged by this. I tend to consider his actions as personal revenge.