On January 10, 2015, in the club “Pirates” there was supposed to be a concert of several punk bands including the Italian “Kalashnikov”.
However, on information received from witnesses, this never happened.
Approximately during the middle of the set of the first band, the club was surrounded by police cars and “branded” vans of Riot police without numbers. Front doors were locked, people were banned to leave the building. After that riot police in masks broke into the building. Without explanations they put everyone face to the walls with hands behind the head. This was followed by ID check and control of personal belongings. The whole procedure took around one hour and a half with constant video recording from police. Distro with anarchist and other political literature was of particular interest for them – they were searching for owners of items without any success. However they confiscated all the items from distro including political books, musical CDs and Vinyls. The whole raided as abruptly as it had begun: after checking everyone they left the place without any explanations.
3 detainees reported after this. The concert just ended before it could even begin. Apparently the preparation for the elections of the President of the Republic of Belarus has already begun.
The three people were detained were selling items at the distro table. Initially, all of them were charged with distribution of extremist materials, later one of the detainees was released pending court. Until the trial the other two people were remanded.
On January 12 Minsk court ruled on the three cases of people detained on Saturday at New Year Punk Show. All the three people were charged with minor hooliganism, two of them were additionally charged with distribution of extremist materials. During the court the Judge have found violations in protocols on distribution of extremist materials so the documents were send back to police to fix the violations.
The Hearing started with Judge forbidding friends and comrades to enter the court room. However several people managed to go through and observe the process. All the detainees were accused of swearing at the moment of riot police entrance to the club. They all accepted the charges. The result was not so optimistic: the girl got around 100 euro fine, two guys were sentenced to 10 days in prison. It is still unclear when the hearing on distribution of extremist materials will be held.
One of the detainees reported that he was beaten up in police station.
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