On August 28, 2013 Zmitser Dashkevich was released from prison. But the former political prisoner is still under preventive police supervision: he is forbidden to stay out of his home from 8 pm to 6 am. Furthermore, Mr Dashkevich is obliged to appear at Pershamaiski district Directorate of Interior in Minsk thrice a week.
‘Today [December, 5] I have been given a notice saying that police supervision could be extended and tightened if I keep showing resistance to policemen,’Mr Dashkevich told Belsat TV.
On November, 6 the co-chairman of opposition party Young Front was detained and sentenced to three days for alleged disobedience to policemen’ s orders. On that day a group of Young Front activists were gathering signatures for renaming Lenin Street – earlier it was called Frantsiskanskaya. In court two police officers witnessed that Mr Dashkevich ‘was holding back, kept sitting down on the ground and failed to comply with their legal reqyirements’.
After the notice had been handed over to him the politician told the officer that the sentence had been passed on the ground of a falsified record. Mr Dashkevich considers the police’s decision as continuation of weakening dissent.
Youth leader neutralization
Zmitser Dashkevich and another activist of Young Front Eduard Lobau were detained on December 18, 2010; they were accused of beating two local residents. Dashkevich and Lobau might have expressed strong dissent and insisted on their not knowing the alleged victims the both were adjudged guilty of especially malignant hooliganism (Article 339, part 3 of the Criminal Code). On March 24, 2011 Zmitser Dashkevich was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in a minimum security penal colony, Eduard Lobau – to four years of a medium security penal colony.
Opposition activists and human rights defenders considered the detention as part of police preventive action performed before the 2010 presidential election. International human rights organisations recognised them political prisoners.
In September, 2011 the activist was offered to file a petition for pardon addressed to Aliaksandr Lukashenka but he rejected this proposal.
