21 August 2001
Five opposition activists detained in Brest for passing out leaflets

 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.