Pavel Sharamet: "Hunters' case" is smokescreen for special operation against independent journalists

On April 8 Pavel Sharamet was questioned by interrogating officer of Moscow-area town of Dolgoprudny on the instructions of the Interior Affairs Ministry of Belarus.

The interrogation lasted for 2 hours and was related to functioning of website "Belarusian partisan" and employees of the Belarusian Interior Affairs Ministry who had left Belarus. Pavel Sharamet was interroagted in Dolgoprudny, as the website is registered there, as well as the firm which administers the server.

Officially Sharamet was questionned as a witness in the case opened by Homel police department for defamation of the former head of the KGB directorate of Homel region, general Korzh.

In the enquiry recieved by Moscow from Minsk had four parts of questions.

The first part concerned "Belarusian partisan" website. Investigators in Minsk are interested how the website is functioning, who and how is posting information there. Sharamet told that the webiste is an open resource and many former citizens of Belarus who had moved to Russia, to Europe or the US, can post most interesting news there, and in many cases he does not know who personally has published this or that article.

"I just follow attentively for articles with extremist content not to appear at the website and delete them ruthlessly," Sharamet said.

The second part of questions concerned articles on "hunters' case" published at websites "Belarusian partisan" and charter97.org. "I could not say much about that, as I started to follow this topic just recently, in the end of 2008," Sharamet said.

The last, big part of questions concerned police captain Vyachaslau Dudkon who had escaped Belarus. Investigators were interested when and how Sharamet met with the captain, what they were talking about, and where he lives.

"Unfortunately, for the last time I saw Dudkin in November 2009, and we have one-way connection, through e-mail. The captain does not like to inform others about details of his personal life," Pavel Sharamet said.

"I am absolutely sure that defamation of Korzh is a smokescreen for a special operation by the KGB against independent journalists and internet resources. Over these months we have not recieved a single letter with complaints or a request to publish contradiction relating the hunters' case. If the Belarusian authorities would continue to hinder our work so stubbornly, I will simply present the website to Belarusians of Poland or young democrats of Norway, I will pass them the address and all details, and I am sure they would make it even more dramatic and biting. Such a procedure takes 5 minutes," Pavel Sharamet stated summing up the results of the questioning.

We remind that recently Paval Sharamet was deprived of Belarusian citizenship.

Earlier in March 2010 police started a real hunt on Belarusian oppositional journalists. Searches in the flats of journalists of charter97.org website, "Narodnaya Volya" and "Novaya gazeta" newspapers were held. They are summoned for interrogations. A real pogrom took place in the news office of charter97.org website. Its journalist Natalya Radzina was punched in the face. A wide campaign has been started against "Belarusian partisan" using veteran organsations and with demands to close the news resource.