Minsk city executive committee banned picket in memory of Hanchar and Krasouski

• 3.09.2009, 13:03

The Minsk authorities forbade the United Civil Party to hold a picket dedicated to the 10th anniversary of disappearance of Viktar Hanchar and Anatol Krasouski.

The UCP office received a written notice about this on September 3, Radio Svaboda reports.

Head of the Minsk UCP department Anatol Paulau thinks the authorities are afraid people of Belarus can remember political disappearances.

“Uladzimir Ramanouski and I wrote a letter to the city executive committee asking to allow us to hold a picket on September 16 at intersection of Fabrychnaya Street and Rabochy Zavulak, where Hanchar and Krasouski disappeared 10 years ago,” Anatol Paulau tells. “We wrote that we would bring posters with slogans about failure to solve those crimes. We said we planned to gather 50 people.

An open letter, signed by deputy head of the Minsk city executive committee Mikhail Tsitsyankou, says our application needed a seal. But our letter was printed on the official party blank, with all necessary attributes, including the registered seat and so on. We have never sealed such documents.

I think the authorities don’t want to be reminded about their inability to solve the case. So they find faults.”

We remind that businessman Anatol Krasouski and politician Viktar Hanchar disappeared on September 16, 1999. The world community suspects officers of the law enforcement bodies of organizing the kidnapping.

A number of high ranking Belarusian officials, in particular former interior minister Uladzimir Navumau, former secretary of Security Council Viktar Sheiman, former interior minister Yury Sivakou, and former commander of special task squad Dzmitry Paulichenka are banned from entry into the EU countries and the US, because they are suspected of involvement in kidnapping of the oppositionists.