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Fyodar Sukhaw, deputy director of the Za Awto association of motorists, was detained by police for four hours on Monday in what appears to have been an attempt to prevent him from joining other drivers determined to stage a protest in downtown Minsk in the evening against a fresh increase in motor fuel prices.
Police apprehended Mr. Sukhaw at his workplace at around 4 p.m. and took him to the Tsentralny district police station, claiming that they suspected him of being involved in a serious hit-and-run accident that occurred in Minsk on August 17.
The man was allowed to go home only at 8 p.m. after police deployed onto the streets at the city center to prevent the protest pulled out.
Calls for the protest appeared on the Internet earlier on Monday, two days after the Belarusian State Petrochemical Industry Concern (Belnaftakhim) raised the retail prices of motor fuel further, by three percent on the average..
The fuel prices campaigners, believed to be affiliated with the Za Awto association, which was behind motorists’ protests earlier this year, suggested that drivers should form single car processions on Independence and Peramozhtsaw Avenues and move along the city’s major thoroughfares at slow speeds of up to 30 kilometers per hour.
Mr. Sukhaw told BelaPAN that he would not appeal his detention. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said.
He said that he was released after a message, “Finished with the protest,” had been radioed to the police at the station.
Mr. Sukhaw had his fingerprints taken and questioned in connection with the alleged road accident. He was placed in a cell after insisting that he was at work at the time of the crash and, as an activist of a motorists’ association who regularly monitored traffic police’s reports, was not aware of any serious road accident in Minsk on that day.
He noted that the policemen were edgy and acted without enthusiasm as if having to trample on their own principles.
“After they put me in the cell, I started demanding that they release me, and they said that I should keep still unless I wanted to be jailed for three days on a charge of using obscene language or some other disorderly conduct,” said Mr. Sukhaw.
Commenting on the failed attempt by motorists to stage the protest in downtown Minsk, the activist said that he believed that the event was a success. Traffic was blocked, which means that the objective of the protest was fulfilled, he said. // BelaPAN
