Shortly about how I survived the recent days.
As all of you know, at 30th of June an informal anarchist meeting in the woods near Krupki (Minsk region) was attacked by Belarusian SWAT and 17 of us spent 5-6 hours on a grass laying face down (some were also handcuffed) when heavy armed cops searched our personal belongings. You can read about it here.
During this crackdown I remembered the face of one of the operatives, who looked like major one. After coming home I went online and understood who it was. Michail Bedunkevich, a chief of “anti-extremist” department of the GUBOPiK (Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption) – also an orchestrator of all the recent repressions against Belarusian anarchists. And I have written a post about him (photos of this “hero” attached).
10 days after writing this post, at the morning, I went out of home and went to a court to cover a trial to my colleague, journalist Dzmitry Halko, who is now imprisoned on accusation of beating a policemen (quite a vague story, provided that Dzmitry is an independent journalist, was visiting Donbass and working along with Ukrainian volunteer battalions – so we strongly suspect that the case was falsificated). After going around 500 meters from home, a van with privacy glass, with 3 riot cops inside stopped by me. After the arrest they brought me to a police station, where I finally got to know now my accusation: article 17.10 of the Administrative code of Belarus: “Demonstrating Nazist symbolic on public”. The operative in a police station did not even give me the case itself to know what the how I actually made this demonstration, only mentioned that it all was made via Facebook. Subsequently i refused to sign a single paper, except the list of my personal belongings. After 3 hours they brought me to a court (check out the rapidity: composing the case, arrest and bringing to court – all in 3 hours!) where I made all possible appeals to a court and finally inspected my case. So the accusation was for three pics in Facebook with swastikas on it. All three meant swastika in negative or sarcastic context, the third one was just a screenshot from a comic show.
Thanks to the fact that case was composed by the cops in a rush, it contained a load of violations. And the judges verdict surprised me a lot: 245 Belarusian rubles of fine (around 100 euro), while I expected 15 days arrest, which is much more usual. The intersting moment that for riot cops who guarded me, such a decision also was unexpected. The moment I was given a fine, they started calling their іbosses asking what to do and followed me everywhere in the court, waiting for order to detain me again. But such an order was not delivered. Yet.
In the same day, in the same court, the another anarchist girl was judged to a same fine, being accused in “Disseminating extremist materials”, and got almost the same fine (110 eur). Her guilt was a photo in social media in a sock cap with a print “Class War”. Such a cap is officially defined as “extremist” in Belarus and put in a official “list of the extremist materials”, composed by a Ministry of Justice. I am not joking.
Conclusions:
1. By now the 3-rd department of the GUBOP is working, in fact, solely against the anarchist movement. Check this out: THE ENTIRE DEPARTMENT OF BELARUSIAN POLICE IS PUT AGAINST US. This is tens of operatives with high technical and resource capacities (look they even can attract SWAT team for their operations).
2. The attack of the cops on the media space of the anarchist is also unfolding rapidly. They want us not be silent not only on the streets but also in the internet.
3. With no doubt, this arrest and trial was a personal revenge from Michail Bedunkevich for revealing him as one of the masked ones in Krupki operation, and for mocking him in Facebook post. According to the materials of the case, he composed it by his own, spending hours, investigating my FB-page. And of cause the accusation he made against me was picked up intentionally in derisive manner: anarchist distributing Nazi symbols, look at that!
Provided I am not planing to stop my “extremist activity” I have to expect further detentions. Two arrests in 12 days can not be just a coincidence. They are trying to push me out of the country, what Bedunkevich said in the woods (“go the fuck to your Europe”). But I am not planning to give up and let cops control what I am saying or posting. The struggle continues.
You will help me a lot if you spread info via your group and channels.
ENGLISH:
https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchist-informal-encounter-attacked-political-police
Armed political police attack an informal anarchist get-together in Belarus
Armed political police attack an informal anarchist get-together in #Belarus
https://pramen.io/en/2018/07/anarchist-informal-encounter-attacked-by-political-police/
SPANISH:
https://redantihistoria.wordpress.com/2018/07/13/anarquistas-atacados-por-policia-bielorusia/
CHZECH:
https://www.afed.cz/text/6856/belorusko-perzekuce-nekonci
