First Deputy Interior Minister Henadz Kazakevich recently said on the air of Belarus 1 that the Interior Ministry “has enough forces and resources” to neutralize the threat of pickets to collect signatures for Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
The statement of the Deputy Minister appeared in a story about the detention of Syarhei Tsikhanouski in Hrodna and his campaign in general.
“We state that the situation on the eve of the election is seriously heating up. And I’m not talking about any single violation of public order or electoral legislation. We often see prepared, planned actions. Moreover, recently there have been threats against the chairpersons of election commissions, which held parliamentary elections. That is, the commissions themselves have not yet been formed for these elections, but threats to people and their families are already coming. In this regard, I want to state that the Interior Ministry has enough forces and resources to neutralize such threats as effectively as possible,” Kazakevich said.
The story on Belarus 1 begins with the words of the anchor that “someone uses some period of the election campaign for their own purposes, without worrying about safety and normal behavior in the society. The TV channel stressed that the collection of signatures for Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya in Hrodna on May 29th immediately turned into a campaign meeting, which is not allowed at this stage of the election campaign.
“On a quiet May evening of Friday a small delegation arrived in Hrodna in SUVs to hold a political rally to collect signatures. “If a casual passerby had asked ‘in whose favor?”, he would have been shown a cardboard figure of one of the activists’ wives, that of Mr Tsikhanouski — in their opinion, she should run the country. By the way, calling him an activist is still an understatement. The whole campaign looks like an activity where “crime bosses” come to tell the inconvenient truth. But in fact, they came to cash in ,” said the story Belarus 1.
According to the story authors, during the picket Tsikhanouski declined “to answer elementary questions of the voters” which led to a fight. As a result two policemen allegedly got injured and were hospitalized.
“We saw a clear signal for organizers of such actions. In Belarus people live by the law, not by concepts. The authorities can guarantee a free and quiet main political campaign,” summed up the BT anchor.
