Picket in Warsaw: Freedom to Belarusian political prisoners!

Anarchists from the Black Cross organisation held a picket of solidarity with Belarusian prisoners of conscience.

They organised a peaceful protest action near the Belarusian Embassy in Warsaw.

A charter97.org correspondent reports that about 15 local policemen, including one plainclothes officer who was watching the event from behind the fence of a neighbouring building, arrived at the site 20 minutes before the picket. One police officer was filming the protesters while his chief was interfering with the picket and reporting about the content of all banners and chants on the phone.

The banners depicted words of support to Belarusian political prisoners, a huge portrait of Mikalai Dziadok, demands to release him and other anarchists and the slogan “Lukashenka, get away”. Activists prepared a special board depicting the Belarusian dictator shaking hands with a man in prison uniform with holes instead of the heads.

More than 30 anarchists come. The total number of people, including journalists and police, was about 50.

“We express our support and solidarity with Belarusian political prisoners, in particular with Mikalai Dziadok, who was given one more year in prison yesterday, and Ihar Alinevich, who was sentenced to 8 years in 2010. We believe the problem will be discussed if we begin to raise this question in different countries more often,” activist Yauhen says.

Protesters spent an hour in front of the embassy, but window blinds were closed. A staff member went out to the roof from time to time to see if activists was over. Protesters held the picket out of the zone of an CCTV camera on the building. They used drums and other sound effects to attract attention, but police failed to find anything forbidden. After the picket, all were offered a portion of bean soup with home-made bread. The embassy staff were invited, but no reaction followed. It was a notice on the embassy's information board reading “the Embassy of Belarus does not work today from 13:00 to 16:00”.

Mikalai Dziadok was to be released on March 3, 2015. He was tried on February 26 and sentenced to one more year of imprisonment.

Human rights defenders note that harassment of opposition members, journalist and small businessmen has increased in the last months. New political prisoners have appeared, the number of preventive arrests of activists has grown, a number of new repressive laws have been adopted, independent websites have been blocked, pressure on small business has increased. Experts explain it with the fact that many EU officials close their eyes to human rights violations in Belarus and try to establish a “dialogue” with the dictator.