Henadz Barbarych: “I was taken out of police department violently”

Yesterday a journalist of the newspaper “Belarusy i rynok” Henadz Barbarych was taken to the police department of Pershamajski district of Minsk.

About 30 activists of the civil campaign “European Belarus” were detained yesterday near the National Library in Minsk on the place where pro-regime trade unions celebrates May Day. Among the detained are Zmitser Barodka, Yauhen Afnahel, Andrei Babitski, the Young Front leaders Zmitser Dashkevich, Artur Finkevich, Zmitser Khvedaruk, and chairman of the Belarusian Social Democratic Party (Narodnaya Hramada) Mikola Statkevich.

All of them were taken to the police department of Pershamajski district. Associates of the detained decided to stage a rally in support of their friends right in front of the police department. Henadz Barbarych was among witnesses of that.

“Young people formed a line and produced portraits of political prisoners… In just a minute riot policemen ran out of the police department,” Henadz Barbarych told to “Narodnaya Volya”. “I was an onlooker, but riot policemen were not interested to find out anything and invited me to follow them”.

The detainees were placed to an assembly hall: “I started to make a list of names of the detained. And at that moment two persons in mufti noticed that two girls had a white-red-white flag. They tried to seize it, but the girls were resisting. One of them, Volha Zhuraulyova, was pregnant, but policemen pushed her… I could not stand it any more, and came near and asked them: “What are you doing?” When they learnt I am a journalist they seized me brutally and in fact carried me out of the hall. A report was not drawn up against me. In a little while young people who had been detained with me, where released as well”.