Journalist: Police officers warned against using words ‘picketing’, ‘hunger-strike’
On Monday morning police arrested hunger-strikers who were protesting against dismissals of trade-union activists from a plant in the Belarusian town of Babruisk. Independent journalists Viachaslau Piashko and Artur Bondarev who were covering the protest action were detained too.
“The policemen cut off and stopped our car, then seized our documents. Within an hour we had to listen to their sermonising at a police station. I should have got his permission for filming, a police major said,” Viachaslau Piashko told Belsat TV.
The detainees were released, but the policemen tried to intimidate the activists saying that they would be punished if a video containing words ‘picketing’ or ‘hunger-strike’ appeared, Mr Piashko stressed.
The activists went on a hunger-strike after four members of Belarus’s Free Trade-Union – Mikalai Zhybul, Aleh Shauchenka, Aliaksandr Varankin and Aliaksandr Hramykin – had been fired by top managers of Babruisk Plant of Tractor Parts and Units.
