Independent Trade Unions Answer To Authorities With New Protests

Protest autumn can start ahead of schedule this year.

To paralyze the work of the independent trade union, which was one of the engines of the current protests of non-parasites. That's how the head of the Belarusian Trade Union of Radio Electronics Industry Workers Henadz Fiadynich assesses the criminal case initiated against the trade union activists. According to Belsat post, the Investigative Committee charged him under part two of article 243 of the Criminal Code - "Evasion from paying taxes."

Fiadynich signed an obligation not to leave the country.

A six-hour search at the REP office was held on August 2, on the same day the accountant and the head of the organization were interrogated. As a result, Ihar Komlik was taken into custody, now he is in jail at Valadarski Street.

According to the State Control Committee, which initiated the case, the accused allegedly had accounts with foreign banks, from which they withdrew large amounts of money and imported them to Belarus. The trade union's lawyer Yury Beliakou, they may be meaning an account in one of the Lithuanian banks, which the organization closed as early as in 2011. It was then that human rights defender Ales Bialiatski was sentenced to a prison term for the same charge.

This is a signal from the regime to all public activists

Belarusian human rights activists do not doubt that the persecution of trade union leaders is politically motivated. They recognized Ihar Komlik as a political prisoner and are preparing a large-scale campaign to support him. The World Organization against Torture, the International Trade Union Confederation and other organizations have already made speeches. And international attention will only increase, Ales Bialiatski is sure.

Bialiatski does not exclude that EU can re-impose the sanctions

He means sanctions that the EU can imposed on Belarusian officials. And this doesn't work in favor of the official Minsk. But what the authorities do not want even more is the return of mass actions this fall. Meanwhile, paradoxically, the protest autumn cn start ahead of schedule precisely because of this criminal case: REP members in Mozyr, Zhlobin, Kalinkavichy, Uvaravichy and Retchytsa filed applications for holding pickets against the persecution of the leaders of the organization. The first of them will be held on the 27th of August.