Minsker sentenced to two years of restriction of liberty for dancing with white-red-white flag near Eternal Flame
On October 25, Partyzanski district court of Minsk passed a guilty verdict in the case of a 28-year-old local resident. A video of her dancing with a white-red- white flag in front of the Eternal Flame commemorating the Soviet victims of the Second World War went viral on the Belarusian segment of the Internet.
The short film was recorded in the Belarusian capital city amid the post-election peaceful protests in August, 2020; the dancer was wearing a white dress and holding a historical flag of Belarus. Then the defendant posted the video on TikTok and Instagram, the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office reports. It is commonly known that the Belarusian regime associate the white-red-white flag and other symbols in these colours with protests and protesters.
According to the prosecution, the young woman ‘was demonstratively sitting on a marble slab in the square in front of the Eternal Flame and the obelisk; then she began to dance on one of the elements of the monument and run around the square’. The Minsker was accused of committing a hooligan act and desecrating an object of historical and historical value.
The court sentenced her to two years of restriction of liberty in an open-type correctional facility; the ‘crime tool’ – her iPhone 6 – is to be confiscated. The defendant pleaded not guilty.
