Street Artists Do Not Allow Authorities To Sleep Peacefully

Coordinator of the street-art project Signal Aleh Larycheu was detained at night.

Coordinator of the street-art project Signal Aleh Larycheu was detained, the trial is to be held on April 28. Before that, he had not been in touch with relatives and acquaintances for a day. His girlfriend Hanna has informed tut.by about that.

In the evening of April 26, Larycheu and analyst Siarhei Chaly were at a 24-hour pizzeria at the Institute of Culture metro station, which they left together. This information was confirmed by Siarhei Chaly himself: "Yes, I was the last who saw him."

As Aleh Larycheu’s girlfriend Hanna says, last time she saw him on April 24, before her departure to Homel, after that they were communicating via the Internet, and at the night from Wednesday to Thursday the connection was lost. The girl says that she contacted Kastrychnitski and Maskouski district police departments of Minsk, but they assured that Larycheu wasn’t there.

According to the girl, relatives are also concerned about Aleh Larycheu’s disappearance and there’s no information about his whereabouts. He doesn’t answer the phone.

No threats against Larycheu have been reported recently, his girlfriend says. "But if you take into account the fact that he was beaten at the beginning of the month ... I think these events are related," –– she believes.

On the night of April 28, Hanna received a call from the police, and she was told that Aleh Larycheu was in the Center for Isolating Offenders in Akrestsin Street and on Friday he would be judged in the court of Tsentralny District under Art. 17.1 of the Administrative Code (petty hooliganism).

We remind that on April 4, Larycheu was beaten by unknown people in the entrance hall of his house and taken to the Emergency Hospital.

Aleh Larycheu is the coordinator of the Belarusian street art community SIGNAL, the organizer of the festival Urban Myths, which was visited by street artists from different countries.

A number of social graffiti and posters have appeared in Minsk in recent months: barbed wire in the image depicting the friendship of Minsk and Moscow, stickers of "green men" and applique works with portraits of ex-head of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection Maryanna Shchotkina, Interior Minister Ihar Shunevich and commander of the Minsk Riot Police Dzmitry Balaba. The authors of the posters with the images of officials and "green men" are unknown.

Larycheu associated the attack in early April with the fact that the authors of this project had posted an announcement on the Signal community page, asking for help.