Thirty Belarusian opposition activists detained

Among those detained in Brest on 19 August is the youth leader Pavel Severinets.  According to information from Radio Svoboda,  the police acted during a presentation of three books which Severinets wrote during his period of imprisonment for organizing protest actions after the 2004 referendum which supposedly gave Lukashenko the right to stand for office indefinitely.

According to Severinets, the police appeared within half an hour of the beginning of the presentation, and detained all those taking part. Pavel Severinets commented that in today’s Belarus the division between the [penal] “zone” and life at liberty is gradually being eroded.

On 22 August those detained, barred the participants who are still minors, are to appear in court. They are charged with breaching public order and illegally holding a mass event. The politician himself was presented with a summons to the district department of internal affairs in Brest.

Alexander Lukashenko recently said that laws needed to be passed to stop “anarchy” on the Internet calling the latter the “mouthpiece of enemy voices”.