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Yury Khadyka: No clear guarantees sound amplifying equipment will be delivered to rally

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Yury Khadyka: No clear guarantees sound amplifying equipment will be delivered to rally

Having sanctioned the demonstration and the meeting on April 26 during the Chernobyl Way, Minsk authorities have not met all requests of the organizing committee however.

It has been told by one of the applicants, Professor Yury Khadyka at a press-conference in Minsk on April 20, BelaPAN writes.

In particular, the authorities have decided to hold a demonstration along Surhanau Street on the pavement, and not on the traffic area, along the first lane of traffic. “We were explained that traffic would be hindered, though trolleybuses could be driving he second lane of traffic. I think that on the contrary it would be difficult for a large number of people to move along the pavements in the evening, when people are on their way back home from work, especially near bus stops,” Khaduka said.

Besides, he noted that the organizing committee wanted to be given guarantees from the authorities that sound amplifying equipment would not be seized this time. “We have not been given clear guarantees, though we had a long conversation with the deputy chief of the Main Directorate of the Interior Affairs of Minsk City Executive Committee Ihar Yauseeu. Only verbal agreement has been received from him, that in case all papers are correct, no one would touch the equipment,” Khadyka said.

Besides, today applicants for holding the rally have been offered to sign a document at Minsk city executive committee that a preventive talk had been held on unacceptability of violating the law during the mass rally. As the city authorities have not given guarantees that the sound amplifying equipment would not be seized, Khadyka refused to sign the document. “The authorities are good at making demands only, and they do not want to make concessions to the civil society in any way even on such a day as another anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophe. As a result, I do not have certainty that we would be able to hold the meeting as it should be,” he said.

The rest of the applicants for holding the rally, a representative of Ecodom public association and a civil campaign “Astravets Nuclear Power Plant is a Crime” Tatsyana Novikava, the leader of the Belarusian Popular Front Party Alyaksei Yanukevich, a representative of the organisning committee for creation of the Belarusian Christian Democracy Party Dzyanis Sadouski and the deputy chairman of the international public association Young Front (the Czech Republic) Miakalai Dzyamidzenka, signed the document that a preventive talk had been given to them.

The application for holding the rally was filed on April 10. The organizers are set to hold the demonstration from 6.30 p.m. till 7.30 p.m. from the building of the National Academy of Science along Surhanau Street up to the Park of Nations’ Friendship, where the commemorative meeting is to be held.

It is planned to finish the event by laying flowers to Chernobyl chapel near the Church dedicated to the Icon of Our Lady “In Search of the Perishing”, which is situated near the Park.

Earlier the organizers of the rally, Chernobyl Way – 2012, stated that they would like to hold it “under a sign of demands to cancel construction of the nuclear power plant in Astravets.” Beside the ecological issue, other vital topics are to be brought up during Chernobyl Way. The most important of them is release of political prisoners.

Chernobyl Way is held every year since 1988 in Minsk in a format of a demonstration which ends with a meeting of representatives of the democratic forces. The year 2011 was an exception. Then the city authorities for the first time banned the rally in its traditional form.

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