Journalist arrested for 15 days
2- 15.05.2008, 16:31
The court of Starya Darohi district sentenced Viktar Khursik, journalist, book publisher and regional ethnographer, to a 15-day administrative arrest on 15 May.
As BelaPAN has learnt from Syarhei Epikhau, judge of the Starya Darohi court, V. Khursik got an administrative arrest for “participation in the unauthorised rally.” The judge refused to tell a term of arrest for the journalist.
Doctor of Historical Sciences Yauhen Anishchanka told in an interview to BelaPAN on 14 May in the evening V. Khursik in response to repeated calls of the authorities of the Starya Darohi district left Minsk in order, according to him, to defend dignity of victims of the tragedy in Drazhno village and people, who tried to memorise the killed. “Today at 10.30 in the morning he told on the phone he was arrested for 15 days. After half an hour the connection with him was lost,” Y. Anishchanka said.
It should be reminded that on 19 April on the initiative of the memorial section of the Belarusian Voluntary Society for Monument of History and Culture Protection (BVSMHCP) a memorial six-pointed orthodox cross of Euphrosyne of Polatsk, a patron saint of Belarus, was installed near the catholic cemetery in Drazhno village and consecrated by an orthodox clergyman. The cross is dedicated to the memory 25 local dwellers, killed by partisans of the second Minsk partisan brigade on 15 April 1943. The names of the killed people are written on a memorial board, affixed to the cross. The eyewitnesses of the tragedy were present at the ceremony. After some days according to a decision of the local administration the memorial cross was demounted and moved to a church in Zaluzha village some kilometres from Drazhno.
Vyachaslau Siuchyk, head of the BVSMHCP memorial section, sentenced by judge S. Epikhau to a 15-day arrest for installing of the cross in Drazhno, noted that he was “indignant with unlawful actions by Starya Darohi administration against Viktar Khursik, who had revealed the truth about the tragedy in Drazhno village.” He is sure the installing and consecration of the cross can’t be qualified as a rally.
