City authorities sanction Chernobyl march


The Minsk City Executive Committee has granted permission to hold a traditional demonstration to mark the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster on April 26, 2012 in Minsk.

Its organizers visited the city executive board where they were handed a permit to stage the «Charnobylski Shlyakh» (Path of Chernobyl) demonstration. The organizers and city government officials also discussed certain technical aspects of the coming demonstration, opposition activist Dzianis Sadouski said.

The organizers filed a request for holding the action on April 10, 2012. Participants are to gather in the square in front of the National Academy of Sciences at 6 p.m. and then march along Surhanava Street to Peoples’ Friendship Park in Bangalore Square for a final one-hour mourning rally, which is to begin at 7:30 p.m. In the end flower-laying to the Chernobyl chapel located not far from the park is to take place.

«The organization committee will accord the demonstration’s route and banners with the city authorities. All other organizations which will propagate ideas non-approved by the committee will be considered as provocative. And both the demonstration guards and police will have to take appropriate steps,» Dzianis Sadouski warned before.

Earlier «Charnobylski Shlyakh» organizers intended to demand to abolish building of Asravets nuclear power station in the course of the demonstration . In addition to the ecological problem, other issues of importance are about to be brought up, i.e. the release of the political prisoners, etc.

The Charnobylski Shlyakh demonstration has been staged by opposition forces in Minsk annually since 1988. But last year the Minsk city government banned a march along Surhanava Street and therefore the demonstration was limited to a rally near Bangalore Square with some 500 people in attendance.

Belsat

www.belsat.eu/en

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