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  • Police Handcuffs a Freelancer to a Tree

    Today, the Soviet district court of Homel has heard the case of blogger Maxim Philipovich: he is being accused of violating the media law by “substituting state mass media”. During a break between court hearings, the police attached the freelancer Kastus Zhukouski with handcuffs to a tree “for disobedience”.

    Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki had shot a report about the results of the admin­is­tra­tive hear­ing into Max­im Philipovich’s case and drove 200 meters away from the court build­ing when he was stopped by a traf­fic police car. The traf­fic war­den, a sub-colonel who did not intro­duce, demand­ed dri­ving license and then invit­ed Kas­tus Zhuk­ous­ki to the traf­fic police depart­ment of Dobrush, claim­ing that the free­lancer had vio­lat­ed traf­fic rules. The lat­ter replied that he had not received any sum­mons, he did not know any­thing about traf­fic vio­la­tions, and he was busy at that moment. He sug­gest­ed that he would turn up at the police depart­ment after receiv­ing an offi­cial sum­mons.

    “The sub-colonel insist­ed, he called for sup­port. Kas­tus was hand­cuffed and attached to a tree. I record­ed every­thing with a video cam­era, but they took it away. I phoned 102, report­ed about vio­lent actions, they gave back the cam­era, but took Zhuk­ous­ki to the traf­fic police depart­ment,” told freelancer’s col­league Andrei Tolchyn. He under­lined that the police per­se­cut­ed Zhuk­ous­ki in all ways for free­lancer activ­i­ties.

    Pho­to by Ale­na Ger­manovich, Bela­PAN

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