Tomorrow, May 14, at 10:30 in the court of the Oktiabrsky district of Minsk begins “the trial” of students and teachers detained in November 2020: Kseniya Syramalot, Anastasiya Bulybenka, Hleb Fitzner, Yahor Kanetski, Illia Trakhtenberg, Viktoryia Hrankouskaya, Maryia Kalenik, Kasia Budzko, Yana Arabeika, Tatsiana Yakelchyk, Alana Gebremariam and Volha Filatchankava.
You can come to the court of the Oktiabrsky District on Semashko St. 33 at 10:30 and support them, because of these brave girls and boys, we have learned who the regime considers being a real threat: young people and teachers, the best representatives of their faculties and universities, students who have won gold medals and scored 100 points per centralized testing.
Today, on May 13, the drummer of the group “Trebuem Razoitis” Aliaksei Sanchuk received 6 years of strict regime colony – only for playing at marches. When he was arrested, he was beaten and asked for a password to his phone.
The “trial” of politicians and activists Pavel Seviarynets, Iryna Shchasnaya, Yauhen Afnahel, Pavel Yukhnevich, Dzmitry Kazlou, Maksim Viniarski, Andrei Voinich began in the same week. The process has been completely closed.
Why? Because even regime representatives understand what this “justice” has nothing to do with the law. They are trying to make the university, the activist, the cultural elite look like terrible criminals and send them to oblivion. Imprisoned leaders of protests are not given messages – Maryia Kalesnikava didn’t receive at least 360 letters sent on her birthday, and she herself was charged with up to 12 years in prison. Lawyers were being disbarred, and the law on lawyers was being changed so that even they could not see and tell what was really going on in prisons. However, those who come out of prison describe how people are beaten, thrown naked in their cells that are filled with chlorine. No journalists, no colleagues, or relatives of prisoners of conscience are allowed to attend the trials of these prisoners.
If the regime declares that it is necessary to “stop unnecessary confrontation” and it has nothing to hide – why does it so carefully hide its crimes and judgments? At the trial of Seviarynets in the Mahilyow Regional Court, it was stated that the hearing would be closed because the materials of the investigation related to a “secret, which is protected by law”. In fact, it is a secret that is protected by the balaclavas of the security forces. And as long as you and I continue to fight and protest, there will be no oblivion. And all the secrecy will become material for honest courts.
I know that in new Belarus, the law will be the same for everyone. That all our heroes of change will be rehabilitated and restored at work and in universities. But the most important thing is that I know that we will conduct an open and independent trial over the past, in order never again to allow such “secrets” in the future”.
