Students’ Case Trial: Police Disperse And Detain Supporters, TUT.BY Journalist

The case of the stu­dents is being con­sid­ered by the Oktyabrsky Dis­trict Court of Min­sk in the build­ing of the House of Jus­tice. When the stu­dents were detained, it was late autumn, now it is late spring. They meet it behind the bars of a pre-tri­al deten­tion cen­tre. Friends and rel­a­tives of the accused began to come to the House of Jus­tice, very ear­ly – by 9.30 am. By this time, a minibus with tint­ed win­dows and a police car are already in the park­ing lot near the cour­t­house, and two yel­low bus­es with tight­ly cur­tained win­dows are in the back­yard.

Vitaly Bud­ko, the father of the detained Kasya from the Belaru­sian State Ped­a­gog­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ty, is also here. Dur­ing these long six months, he nev­er saw his daugh­ter: only the girl’s moth­er and grand­moth­er were allowed to see her once. Will he see his daugh­ter today? As he was explained, there are only 20 seats for the audi­ence in the court­room, and there are 12 accused, and each has more than one rel­a­tive.

Young peo­ple who came to sup­port the stu­dents are gath­er­ing on the porch of the House of Jus­tice, they go inside, but quick­ly come back. “They said that there are few seats in the court­room, so at first only rel­a­tives will be allowed. They asked if we could at least stand at the door They said no, because of the “COVID-19″. And this was said by a man with­out a mask,” the young peo­ple are indig­nant and remain stand­ing on the porch.

By 9.40, sev­er­al dozen peo­ple had already gath­ered out­side the build­ing. In the build­ing itself, there are guards and plain­clothes offi­cers on duty. Police offi­cers are also on duty in the street. Lawyers were allowed into the court­room first, then two rel­a­tives of each accused. Jour­nal­ists and ordi­nary vis­i­tors will be admit­ted only if there are emp­ty seats in the room.

After 10.15, the accused were brought into the hall. The hear­ing is sched­uled for 10.30. The tri­al is being con­duct­ed by judge Mari­na Fedoro­va. Nei­ther jour­nal­ists nor pho­tog­ra­phers, who do not need a place in the room, were not allowed to attend the hear­ing. Some of the rel­a­tives of the accused, as well as jour­nal­ists, remained in the cor­ri­dor. The doors of the court­room closed, although thу process is open. The grand­moth­er, who was not allowed inside, burst into tears.

More than a hun­dred peo­ple remain on the street who came to sup­port the accused. A police­man came out and request­ed to dis­perse, but the peo­ple said that they would stand until the end of the hear­ing. Those who came to sup­port the stu­dents were in no hur­ry to leave. The process was accel­er­at­ed by police offi­cers, who yelled in a mega­phone that “peo­ple will no longer be allowed into the court­room, please dis­perse.” A few min­utes lat­er, riot police offi­cers got out of the minibus and peo­ple slow­ly began to dis­perse. Those who did it at a leisure­ly pace were stopped by riot police offi­cers and tak­en into a minibus.

Among the detainees is the ex-chair­man of the Unit­ed Civ­il Par­ty Ana­toly Lebed­ko. As the read­ers informed TUT.BY, he was stopped by peo­ple in civil­ian clothes as he was about to leave. 

TUT.BY jour­nal­ist Lyubov Kasper­ovich was also detained. Before her arrest, she inter­viewed friends of one of the accused — she ful­filled her pro­fes­sion­al duties, prepar­ing a report.

Very soon there was no one left near the cour­t­house. Two police­men were on duty at the entrance, the area was patrolled by police ser­vice vehi­cles. Accord­ing to the Min­sk city exec­u­tive committee’s depart­ment of inter­nal affairs, at about 11 am, 14 peo­ple were detained near the House of Jus­tice, who “did not ful­fil the law­ful demands of the police offi­cers.”

“Law enforce­ment offi­cers have repeat­ed­ly warned the audi­ence about the ille­gal­i­ty of hold­ing mass events and asked to dis­perse. These cit­i­zens were tak­en to the dis­trict police depart­ment of Min­sk for inves­ti­ga­tion,” the state­ment reads.