Mikalai Statkevich: After Lifting Of Sanctions Regime In Belarus Has Got Pretty Brazen

For more than half a year the authorities have been waiting for a decision of European officials, to start threatening opposition leaders then.

Charter97.org has been told about that by one of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition, a former political prisoner Mikalai Statkevich, who commented on the decision of bailiffs to block the cell number and the car of Anatol Liabedzka.

– Had you faced the same rulings of bailiffs as Liabedzka had, and how could you comment these actions of the authorities?

– The authorities want to intimidate organisers and ordinary participants of street rallies. I openly state: I am not “late” paying the fines, I simply won’t pay them.

They will try to put pressure certainly. But I have no property registered in my name, so they have sent my wife the same letter as to Anatol Liabedzka: her car could be confiscated as “marital property.”

I had anticipated such a scenario. Those who claim the leadership, must be ready for everything, and exclude all opportunities for the authorities to put pressure on them. The first thing they start from is property. It is written in their textbooks – the first thing a person could be tested by is his or her response to deprivation of property.

That is why no property is registered in my name. Last time, when I was summoned to the police department, knowing that bailiffs were going to be there, I brought with me all documents confirming that I have no property, including the certificate that the car had been presented to my wife by our son, and it was not “a marital property”.

I was also threatened by blocking my mobile phone, but at the same time they recommended insistently recommended that my stationary phone should be functioning. But I answered that I use only a cell phone, and if you want to deprive yourself a possibility to summon me to courts – let it be shut off.

All these attempts of pressure look simply comical as compared to the things I had come through over the last five years. I won’t pay any fines which I find illegal. And if they want to block my money at by cell phone account – they are welcome, they are simply going to relieve me from the necessity to receive their spam with summons to the court.

One should never give way in such cases: we can stop the avalanche of crackdown only by non-cooperation with the regime and by paying no money to them. And leaders should be an example of that.

– Sanctions against the regime have been lifted recently, and against this background seizures of property and money of the opposition leaders start… What can you say on this occasion?

– Now they demand from me to pay fines for the rallies held by me in September and October last year. The authorities have been waiting for more than half a year, until the sanctions are lifted from them, and high-ranking officials visit Belarus, to proceed to such actions.

Earlier I didn’t pay any attention to their text messages about trials and fines, and now they decided to execution of those decisions. Why is it done now? As they have realized, that their “new partners” do not respond to that. The authorities are going to probe into and test the bounds, where the patience of the West could run out. It is to continue until the EU start to express their protest against the developments in Belarus more firmly.

And it is a matter of conscience and dignity of European politicians, who contact with Lukashenka’s regime. And my conscience and dignity are in taking a principled stand and in not giving money for supporting the gang, which had captured control in our country. They are not going to receive anything from me. Trying to intimidate a person, who had spent 5 years in prison, by shutting off his mobile phone and imposing a foreign travel ban on him, is simply laughable.