Five activists of Zubr (Bison), an unregistered youth movement, spent some time in police detention in Brest on August 19 for passing out a special
election edition of the newspaper Nasha Svaboda.
The youths were taken to a police station where two of them, Polina Panasyuk and Andrei Zolotar, were charged with staging an unauthorized demonstration. The three others proved to be legal minors, who insisted that they had not passed out the leaflets.
The police called the youngsters' parents and drew up a report charging them with neglecting their parental duties under Article 162 of the Administrative Offenses Code. The report will be sent to the administrative commission of the district of residence and the parents may be fined.
As the father of one of the detainees told BelaPAN, police officers intimidated his wife when she arrived to pick up their son. "They told her that they would take him to a VD clinic for examination, and then to the detention center in Baranovichi. She was shocked," the father said. According
to him, the police also threatened that their son would be expelled from the college. Mikhail Kregel, deputy chief of the police department, told
BelaPAN that he saw no reason for commenting on the incident.
Yelena Yushkevich, a member of the opposition Belarusian Social Democratic Party, had her apartment in Baranovichi searched by police on August 14.
According to Ms. Yushkevich, the police showed no warrant, explaining only that her underage children had been caught passing out a Russian newspaper called President and that it was an offense. Two dozen copies of the newspaper, containing sharp criticism of the Belarusian incumbent
ruler, Aleksandr Lukashenko, were seized as a result of the search.
Ms. Yushkevich says a man who claimed to be a Committee for State Security (KGB) officer has phoned her to advise her to keep quiet about what happened. However, the woman considers the search illegal and promises to report it to the local public prosecutor.
governor of the Brest region, told the Brest Regional Soviet on August 16.
The Free Economic Zone "Brest," located in a 300,000 Belarusian city of the same name near the Polish border, currently embraces 91 enterprises, of which 78 are operational. Sixty-four specialize in manufacturing, six in commerce and public catering, three in transportation, two in construction, two in banking, and one in agricultural production, according to Brest's statistics office.
"Brest" residents' output totaled about 50 billion rubels in the former half of 2001. The zone exported $25.8 million worth of goods and services, 10.7 percent of the Brest region's total exports. Russia accounted for 96.7 percent of the zone's exports, including 2,502 tons of sausage and
342,300 pieces of furniture. Non-CIS exports included timber, particle board, plywood, vacuum and air pumps. The zone's imports come almost entirely from outside the CIS. They totaled $31.4 million in January-June 2001, or 15.3 percent of the Brest region's total imports, and included 2,775 tons of fish products, 15,800 cubic meters of fib erboard, 12 automobiles and 2,212 tons of furniture parts.
Some 20 persons amassed on a central street in Brest on the evening of August 15 to form a "chain of concerned people." The demonstrators displayed portraits of Gennady Karpenko, Yury Zakharenko, Dmitry
Zavadsky, Viktor Gonchar, Anatoly Krasovsky and other prominent individuals who are believed to be victims of the Lukashenko regime, and signs saying, "People are disappeared in our country! Why are we keeping silent?" "Krasovsky, Zakharenko, Gonchar, Zavadsky.... Who's next?"
Among the demonstrators were Natalya Galanina, a member of the Brest City Soviet (elected council); Inna Kulei, head of the Center for Support of Civil Initiatives "Vezha"; lawyer Galina Drebezova; actress Dina Doiban; and others. Two participants were reportedly detained by police after the demonstration. According to representatives of the Zubr youth movement, prior to the protest, they had delivered "summons" to
Mikhail Kolotukhin, chief of the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Brest Regional Executive Committee, the chief of the police department of the Brest district, and the chiefs of two district police departments in Brest to appear near the Belarus Hotel at 1 p.m. on August 17. "We would like to find out what the police of our region are doing to find the disappeared," the Zubr activists explained.
Lyudmila Karpenko and Irina Krasovskaya visited Brest on August 14. The wives of politician Gennady Karpenko, who died under unclear circumstances in 1999, and businessman Anatoly Krasovsky who disappeared along with his friend, former Central Election Commission Chairman Viktor Gonchar, in September 1999, said that they were
touring through Belarus to "urge people to give thought to what is going on." Before visiting Brest, the wives met with representatives of the public in the towns of Slonim and Pruzhany.
"Under this government, we will find out nothing about our husbands," Mrs. Karpenko said. She expressed conviction that her husband was murdered for his political activities. "We know who ordered [the killings and kidnappings], but we want to know who executed the orders."
In July, the wives visited Moscow, Paris, and Washington to draw the international community's attention to what had happened to their husbands.
"In the United States, we requested to set up a commission to investigate the circumstances of the disappearance and assassination of our husbands, and asked the United States to influence the Russian authorities. Our trips did not go unnoticed. [Belarusian leader Aleksandr] Lukashenko reacted to them. He called them 'fuss' and us 'plotters.'" Asked whether they had appealed for help to Mr.
Lukashenko's wife and mother, Mrs. Karpenko said that it would be pointless because "an apple does not roll far away from the apple tree."
Mrs. Krasovsky told the audience that the abduction of her husband and Mr. Gonchar appeared to have been thoroughly planned from start to finish. She said that the Belarusian ruler had sacked the prosecutor general and the Committee for State Security (KGB) chief when they were too close to solving the case.
The wives said that they were touring through Belarus because they felt that their stories could cause women to become more active and more united. They were to go to Baranovichi on August 15 and to visit locations in the Vitebsk region.
Within the next two weeks, non-governmental organizations' members in Brest will pass out in the streets appeals by the wives of the disappeared politicians.
The pre-election walking tour of the Brest region, organized by local opposition youth groups between August 5 and 20 to stir up voter activity, has already drawn the law enforcement agencies' close attention.
After setting out from Pinsk, the hikers have been followed by Committee for State Security (KGB) vehicles. When they journeyed through a collective or state farm, police or local chiefs usually checked their identity documents and asked about the purpose of the campaign. Authorities everywhere are well informed about the tour. The hikers say that they are on good terms with KGB agents, who often give them a lift.
The youths have traveled through more than 30 villages, making stops in the towns of Stolin, Pinsk and Ivanovo.
In Ivanovo on August 12, they passed out copies of the independent newspaper Brestsky Kuryer and election calendars, calling on residents to cast their ballots on September 9, not during the five-day early voting period, in order to reduce the authorities' chance of rigging the election.
The Housing Department of the Brest regional government presses for a ban on the use of apartment balconies in houses constructed before 1970. The move follows a balcony crash in the city of Kobrin, in
which two people were killed and five seriously injured on
July 8.
The commission, which investigates the incident, found that the balcony collapsed because of insufficient bearing capacity of the concrete slab, which had manufacturer defects. The defective slabs were widely used for construction of houses in the region before 1970, the department said. The department suggests that residents should give a written pledge to keep their balconies shut before their examination by construction experts. The department said that approximately 80,000 balconies must be examined in the region. The regional government is reportedly drafting a directive to that effect.
Out of 288 voters polled in Brest 79 percent said they would vote in the country's presidential elections in September, the Brest-based polling agency
Shchyrast reports.
When asked who they planned to vote for, 25 percent named the current head of state, Aleksandr Lukashenko; and 12 percent chose trade union leader Vladimir Goncharik, the anti-Lukashenko opposition's favorite for president. Ten percent gave preference to former Grodno region governor Semyon Domash, No. 2 on the opposition's candidate list; four percent preferred Liberal Democratic Party leader Sergei Gaidukevich; and 38 percent said they had not chosen yet.
Fifty-four percent of the respondents disapproved and 34 percent approved of the way Mr. Lukashenko has been running Belarus for seven years. Thirteen percent either skipped the question or checked "Difficult to say".
The management of the Free Economic Zone (FEZ) "Brest" has given the go-ahead for the construction of a chocolate sweets plant in the FEZ.
The plant will be run by a Belarusian-Polish joint venture named BelBARD, which plans to produce up to 150 tons of sweets per month. Before building the plant, BelBARD intends to put out up to 60 tons of chocolate sweets for export at leased premises.
The FEZ management has also allowed company Olga1 to deploy
a facility in the FEZ to produce 18,000 heavy truck tire treads per year.
The two companies plan to employ a total of 70 people The FEZ in Brest currently has 91 resident enterprises, which reportedly manufactured 50 billion rubels worth of goods and paid 5 billion rubels in taxes in the first six months of the year.
The International theatre festival “Belaya Vezha” will be held on September 22-26 in Brest. The National festival of the Belarusian films, which is organized once in two years, will be also held in Brest soon.
During the press conference, which was held on August 8 in the Brest Executive Committee, Director of the festival Valentina Stepanova noted that the Ministry of Culture of Belarus, the National film studio “Belarusfilm”, the Belarusian union of cinema makers, the Brest Executive Committee and the National TV and Radio Company are the founders of the event. According to Valentina Stepanova, popular science, documentary, animation and other movies will be demonstrated during the festival. The prize will be presented to the director of the work, in which the national theme will be better reflected. Meetings with actors, directors and cameramen will be organized within the framework of the festival as well. The jury of the festival will be headed by head of the Union of filmmakers of Lithuania Gitis Lukshas.
21 August 2001