Minsk: Reporter Ales Silich detained for ‘picketing’. He just had historical emblem on passport cover

The police­men seized equip­ment and mobile phones from the detainees. When check­ing the IDs, they noticed a cov­er with the image of the emblem Paho­nya (Pur­suit) on Silich’s pass­port. As a result, the reporter was accused of ‘sin­gle-man pick­et­ing through demon­strat­ing unreg­is­tered sym­bols’ and left in cus­tody. He has to spend the week­end behind bars await­ing the tri­al which is like­ly to be held on Mon­day.

After spend­ing about three hours in the police sta­tion, Natallya Valaki­da was released.

It should be not­ed that Paho­nya was declared cul­tur­al her­itage of Belarus in May, 2007; it is con­sid­ered to be state-pro­tect­ed.

In 1991, the white-red-white flag and the emblem Paho­nya were adopt­ed as nation­al sym­bols of the coun­try. How­ev­er, they were offi­cial until the 1995 ref­er­en­dum, when on the tip from Belaru­sian leader Alyak­san­dr Lukashen­ka, who is an ardent adher­er of the USSR, they were replaced by the Sovi­et ones. For years, pro-Lukashen­ka offi­cials have been link­ing the white-red-white colours to the oppo­si­tion. Last Decem­ber, the author­i­ties said that those Belaru­sian cit­i­zens who would hang out ‘unreg­is­tered sym­bols’ even on their win­dows or bal­conies might be penalised under admin­is­tra­tive law.