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Journalist Volha Chaichyts Reported Her Conversation With Police Chief

Journalist Volha Chaichyts Reported Her Conversation With Police Chief
PHOTO: VADZIM ZAMIROUSKI, TUT.BY

She has spent several hours at the Barauliany police station today.

From the very beginning, the police did not like the fact that Volha Chaichyts was recording in the police building. What happened next, the journalist told belsat.eu:

“When I was detained, I made a video, recorded the police. When we entered the police station, the district police officer of the Barauliany police department, Dzmitry Smyk, asked me to turn off the camera. I said that the police station is not a regime object, it is a public place, I have the right to take pictures there. Then he seized my phone by force and deleted all the videos with them. Then I was left in the corridor, had to wait for a long time. They brought papers to let me learn my rights. I asked them to speak Belarusian with me, to which they declared that we have two state languages, and they have the right to speak any of them. Then they left. No one kept me there, I had no right to leave the department, but I had the right to move around it.

I went to the head of the police department to complain that my right was being violated, and that the police were obliged to speak with me in the state language I want. He just started to bark at me: “Get out of here! They will speak the language! What else do they have to do – to paint their tongue red? I said get out of here! I'm not having a reception day!” That's how he shouted at me, and then he just kicked me out.

Then I waited a long time in the corridor again. He approached and started to say that they had changed the law – since a lot of policemen couldn’t speak Belarusian, the law had been changed, so that they could speak any of the official languages. It was Kanstantsin Zayats – the head of the Barauliany police department. After three hours had passed, they drew up a report for yesterday’s article about Kurapaty and released me.”

Journalist Volha Chaichyts was detained in Kurapaty and taken to the police department in order to draw up a report against her for shooting without accreditation in the tract on October 14.

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