‘Cleaning-up operation’ in progress? Searches in Vitsebsk, Mahiliou, Brest, other places
On Tuesday morning, Homiel-based media outlet Silnye Novosti reported about the police’s searching the place of their accountant Hanna Strelchanka. The reasons are unknown; on July 9, the homes of almost all employees were raided.
Volha Latyshava, a photographer from Brest, also said on Twitter about unexpected ‘guests’. The flat of Darya Harashchanka, the publisher of the Brest magazine Binokl (Binoculars), was searched as well. She was taken to Leninski district police department and then released, but her mobile phone was confiscated. The police also came to Binoculars editor Kseniya Pyatrovich, but the woman was out, and her mother did not open the door.
Human rights centre Viasna has been informed of a total of six searches which were conducted today by the KGB in Brest as part of the so called terrorism act criminal case. The persons whose homes have been searched have the status of witnesses. Belsat TV has got reports from Vitsebsk about at least six searches and six detainees. All of them are on the authorities’ black books; our reader believes that the operation is being carried out in the run-up to the Slavonic Bazaar song festival. Internal troops were spotted on the streets of the city.
The readers also let us know about at least six searches made in Mozyr on Monday; the warrants were issued by the KGB. The six were released after interrogations.
On Tuesday afternoonm the Belarusian Association of Journalists reported the raid on the editorial office of Mahiliou Region website.
Last week, the State Security Committee (KGB) reported the conduct of ‘an operation to clean up radicals’. The statement was voiced by Kanstantsin Bychak, the deputy head of the KGB investigation department, on the air of the state-run TV channel Belarus 1. It is unknown whether that was the operation announced by Alyaksandr Lukashenka on July 2 and whether it was connected with the attack on the free press and activists.
