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Thuggish arrests of activists and journalists mar Chernobyl anniversary march in Minsk, Belarus
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2013/belarus_npp_crackdown
Thuggish arrests of activists and journalists mar Chernobyl anniversary march in Minsk, Belarus
Charles Digges, 06/05-2013
MINSK – Still bent on plowing ahead with the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, Minsk remains intolerant of any opposition to the project – even on the day commemorating the Chernobyl disaster, when protesters taking part in a sanctioned rally against the construction ran into often violent scrapes with government security services and blockades and detentions of environmentalists and reporters.
The spate of detentions and reports of police brutality signaled another – though unexpected – ratcheting up of official repression after 2,000 people took to the streets in the Belarusian capital on the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26 in a demonstration called Chernobyl March 2013.
The event was green-lighted by local officials, according to Bellona correspondent Tatyana Novikova, but the well-established yearly event that has been taking place since 1996, the decade anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion, was characterized by an unusually high degree of government crackdowns.
This year, said Novikova, was the first year ever in the history of the march that activists were detained.
The Chernobyl March is the single ecological street demonstration traditionally allowed by Belarusian authorities. The single exception was in 2011, when after the reelection of Belarus’s repressive president, Alexander Lukashenko, the demonstration was suspended and reduced to public meetings in Minsk’s Peoples; Friendship park.
<snip>
Thuggish arrests of activists and journalists mar Chernobyl anniversary march in Minsk, Belarus
Charles Digges, 06/05-2013
MINSK – Still bent on plowing ahead with the Belarusian Nuclear Power Plant, Minsk remains intolerant of any opposition to the project – even on the day commemorating the Chernobyl disaster, when protesters taking part in a sanctioned rally against the construction ran into often violent scrapes with government security services and blockades and detentions of environmentalists and reporters.
The spate of detentions and reports of police brutality signaled another – though unexpected – ratcheting up of official repression after 2,000 people took to the streets in the Belarusian capital on the anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26 in a demonstration called Chernobyl March 2013.
The event was green-lighted by local officials, according to Bellona correspondent Tatyana Novikova, but the well-established yearly event that has been taking place since 1996, the decade anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion, was characterized by an unusually high degree of government crackdowns.
This year, said Novikova, was the first year ever in the history of the march that activists were detained.
The Chernobyl March is the single ecological street demonstration traditionally allowed by Belarusian authorities. The single exception was in 2011, when after the reelection of Belarus’s repressive president, Alexander Lukashenko, the demonstration was suspended and reduced to public meetings in Minsk’s Peoples; Friendship park.
<snip>
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