Control tightening over police
- 24.10.2012, 13:42
The current and former heads of the Ministry of Internal Affairs announced holding “officer assemblies”.
“The Belarusian police are holding today the officer assembly for the first time in 100 years. We are going to revive the tradition of officer assemblies in the Belarusian police,” Belarusian interior minister Ihar Shunevich told journalists on Wednesday, Interfax news agency reports.
The interior minister said the assembly gathered the delegates from “all divisions of the Belarusian law-enforcement bodies, the most trained, honest and responsible officers”.
The minister noted that practice of holding officer assemblies would be continued in the future. These events will facilitate “self-purification, improving the quality of life and state of law-enforcement officers”.
“We need to revive the best Soviet traditions, when only the best people could work in police and letters of recommendations were needed to be enrolled,” Leanid Maltsau, the state secretary of the Security Council, said.
Speaking about aims of the event, he said: “We should have a clear understanding that the primary goal of officer assemblies is defending honour and dignity of a law-enforcement officer.”
Protoiereus Fyodar Pouny and former interior minister Anatoly Kulyashou attended the assembly.
“These officer assemblies don't have a legal status. A possible result is tightening control over personnel. It looks like a formal procedure. The time for reforms in the police has long been ripe. Nothing will improve until the political system is changed. The police under Lukashenka are a tool of political investigations, nothing more,” human rights activist and former procuracy investigator and Aleh Vouchak comments on the event for charter97.org.
If should be reminded that current and former interior ministers have relation to torture of political prisoners. Anatoly Kulyashou was in charge of the operation to disperse the protest rally against the fraudulent presidential elections on December 19, 2010. Ihar Shunevich, a then KGB officer, questioned the people detained and thrown into jail in connection with the criminal case over the protest rally.