All women to undergo obligatory fingerprinting

• 8.09.2009, 10:49

The time has come for Belarusian women to tell their whereabouts during the blast in Minsk on July 4, 2008.

More then 50 persons were wounded then by the blast in the centre of Minsk. The authorities called that malicious hooliganism and opened a criminal case. Hundreds of people were imprisoned in a remand prison as suspects, and hundreds thousands were questioned as witnesses. The population of Belarus was to undergo compulsory fingerprinting.

At present policemen are filing reports of interrogation of women in the case of the last year’s blast. Some of them are interrogated in the police, while others are visited at home.

The senior officer of Frunzenski district of Minsk Aleh Hajdukevich told to Radio Svaboda that all citizens of the country are to be fingerprinted for the national database.

“We offer citizens to be fingerprinted voluntarily. There are just a few persons who refused. If a person hasn’t committed a crime, what does he have to fear? Or is he or she going to commit a crime? It is a preventive measure. A person who offered his fingerprints would know that they are kept somewhere. It would be much easier to have them all in a database. We will reach women as well. We will fingerprint women too”.

For a year policemen went house-to-house in Minsk and in other cities of Belarus and asked people about their whereabouts during the festive concert when the blast took place, or whether there were suspicious persons in their house. Men were summoned to military enlistment offices and fingerprinted there.

Now policemen have received lists of women and are doing interrogation records. Observers say that women will be summoned for fingerprinting soon.