VKontakte renews group “We're fed up with Lukashenka”

Administrators of the social networking website replied to moderators after three days of silence.

The group “We're fed up with Lukashenka” on VKontakte social networking website was restored today. The tech support team made advances to the group administrators and restored all messages in the protest community. The tech support team also reinstated all earlier removed members in the group. Besides, the administration rights for the group were transferred from moderators in Belarus to an administrator in Warsaw to prevent hacking.

The group administrator, Maksim Charnyauski, comments for charter97.org on the situation of the renewed group:

“The Belarusian KGB again made a fool of themselves. They carried out a special operation, arrested moderators, seized equipment, reported on their bosses that dissident communities on social networking sites were deleted and got an egg on their face. They stirred up hype about us. Now ten times more people know about us. If our two moderators were not behind bars, we could say the security services helped us – they promoted our community,” the administrator of the group “We're fed up with Lukashenka” said.

“We were not very active, but after this pressure from the KGB our group will intensify its protest activity. We are going to join the boycott campaign and move from the Internet to streets. The situation of our group shows that crackdown on dissidents will only increase the number of angry people. The reaction is like a snowball,” Maksim Charnyauski thinks.

We remind that secret services detained five moderators of protest communities on VKontakte social networking website on August 30. KGB officers seized their computers and got access to administration of the groups “We're fed up with this Lukashenka” with 37,000 members and “Only SHOS!' with more that 15,000 members. KGB officers were deleting every message and every member of the communities. Andrei Tkachou was detained, interrogated and given 7 days in custody for “disorderly conduct”. Pavel Eutikheey was given 5 days in custody. Aleh Shramuk was released at night after an interrogation. Raman Pratasevich was beaten and let free as a minor. Syarhei Byaspalau managed to flee to Russia.