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Neo-Nazis deny involvement in alleged abduction of Femen activists

 

The Belarusian branch of Russia`s ultra-nationalist Russian National Unity ("RNE") has denied involvement in the alleged abduction of three activists of Ukraine`s feminist group Femen following their topless protest in front of the KGB headquarters in central Minsk on Monday.

In a statement issued on its website late on Wednesday, the group dismissed the allegation, made by the three women at a news conference in Kyiv, as an extremely gross provocation.

“Our men didn`t touch them, however strongly one may wish to present it like that. I think that an extremely gross provocation is taking place. Its objectives, nature and masterminds are yet to be looked into,” a spokesman for RNE in Belarus said in the statement almost identical to the one made by KGB chief Vadzim Zaytsaw the previous day as he denied the Committee for State Security’s involvement in the incident.

The phones of the young women went dead several hours after their December 19 anti-Lukashenka protest. Their whereabouts were not known until Tuesday afternoon, when they phoned an associate to say that they had been abducted, beaten, abused and dumped in a forest near the Ukrainian border, with their phones and passports taken away. After spending a few hours in the forest, they finally arrived at a village located kilometers away from the Ukrainian border, where they asked a man to give them his phone to make the call.

They were interviewed by police, and the Ukrainian consul arrived at the scene. The women returned to Ukraine in the early hours of Wednesday.

The women said that they were abducted at the Uskhodni bus station in Minsk on the evening of December 19 by six men, who introduced themselves as police officers and bundled the activists into two vehicles. After riding around the city for hours, the men blindfolded the women and handed them over to a group of other men, who the women said introduced themselves as RNE activists. The women were taken to the woods, beaten, forced to undress and hold Nazi banners and doused with brilliant green. Everything was videotaped, said the Femen activists. //BelaPAN