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New KGB raids over post-election protest

 

KGB officers raided the homes of opposition activists in Homyel and Zhlobin and the office of the Homyel regional organization of the United Civic Party on January 6.

Memory cards, compact discs, family photographs, mobile phones and notebooks as well as records of songs on lyrics by poet Uladzimir Nyaklyayew, who was a candidate in the recent presidential election, were seized in the raid on the home of Kanstantsin Zhukowski, an activist of Belarusian Christian Democracy.

A KGB officer also searched the home of another BCD activist, Yawhen Yakavenka. "Ironically, the search was conducted by a man I knew because we studied together at Belarusian State Transport University," he told BelaPAN. "The officer, Dzmitry Kavalenka, seized my mobile phone, camera, voice recorder, printed materials, memory devices, laptop and white-red-white flag."

In a raid on the home of Valery Rybchanka, chairman of the Zhlobin district organization of the Spravedlivy Mir (Just World) Belarusian Party of the Left, KGB officers seized a computer, a copier, a memory card and a list of the members of the district organization.

It was not immediately known what happened during the raid on the office of the regional organization of the United Civic Party because the mobile phones of the organization's leaders were switched off, possibly because they were being questioned.

According to the search warrants, issued by the Minsk City Prosecutor's Office, the raids were intended to check reports that the individuals targeted by them attended the unsanctioned post-election protest in Minsk on December 19. //BelaPAN