Belarusian writes: We haven’t met such mass persecutions since Stalin’s times
15- 4.02.2010, 9:14
The Union of Belarusian Writers (UBW) says about unprecedented persecution of union members by the authorities and demands to stop repressions immediately.
The UBW council made an appropriate statement on February 3, BelaPAN reports.
The statement says in 2010, “an unprecedented action on defamation and persecution of the members registered in our creative organization started. Poets, writers, and critics writing in Belarusian and Russian are called to governmental bodies and demanded to quit the Union of Belarusian Writers.”
The UBW council states “offensive and unlawful processes took place in Minsk and in all Belarusian regions” that was authorized by “top government agencies of Belarus”.
The statement notes that about a hundred of the Union members addressed the union leadership and council asking for help and defense of the civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution of Belarus and the Law on Public Associations: “For example, even a poetess living in the Chernobyl zone and bringing up two under-age children has faced administrative and psychological mockery.”
“Belarusian writes haven’t met such mass persecutions since Stalin’s times,” the statement says.
Taking into account the above mentioned facts, the UBW council demands to “stop persecution of the UBW members immediately; estimate the destructive activity of the UBR leadership head by Charhinets that harms irreparably contemporary literary process and national culture.”
In the contrary case, the UBW, being a full member of such international organizations as the International Association of Writers’ Union (Moscow), European Writers’ Council (Brussels), Baltic Writers’ Council (Stockholm), International Association of Writers’ Unions “Words without Frontiers” (Kyiv), will have to ask these and other organizations for support.
The UBW reserves the right to “hold protest actions in an established by law order to defend the right of the members of the Union of Belarusian Writers to labour and associations”.
