Zmitser Bandarenka: System has ground to dust dozens thousand people

• 18.04.2012, 9:24

The former political prisoner Zmitser Bandarenka has compared mass arrests of officials and businessmen in Belarus with the repressions of 1937.

He stated that at the press-conference on April 17 in Minsk. The recently released presidential candidate Andrei Sannikov has taken part in the conference as well.

“Repressions are carried out against all sections of the society today. We noticed that back in 2000, when the campaign for fighting corruption started,” the coordinator of “European Belarus” Zmitser Bandarenka stated.

“There were 800 cases related to the fight against corruption, imagine if 4 persons are involved in every case, multiply 800 by 4, it makes about 3,000 persons. Comparing to the year 1937: there were 150 mln of people in the Soviet Union, there are 10 million in Belarus. Multiply thee by 15, it makes 45 thousand millions of officials, policemen, businessmen, it is a serious figure. That’s how the situation looked like in 2000. Over the 10 years the system has ground to dust dozens thousands of people. There are former heads of state-run TV channels, policemen, officers of the Interior Ministry and the KGB among them. In actual fact the situation is very frightening for all of us. It is probably one of the most important conclusions after my prison term: all prisoners are jailed on the ground of politics,” the politician believes.