Police Disrupts Book Presentation in Hrodna
On October 23 a presentation of the book “Mova” by Viktar Martsinovich was supposed to be held in Hrodna in a building of a Greek Catholic parish; however, police and executive officials turned up and gave ten minutes to finish up the party.
According to naviny.by, the police announced that the event would be canceled and invited the writer to proceed for compiling an administrative report. The authorities claimed that the book presentation should have been sanctioned by administration as a mass event.
Meantime, the organizers argued that it was an indoors book presentation, besides, similar presentations in Minsk and Luninets were held without any claims of the kind. A representative of the ideology department of the Hrodna City Executive Committee commented to Radio Svaboda that the incident was related to the fact that “the building had not been commissioned yet”. As for relevance of such actions on police's behalf, the official admitted that they had gone too far.
The writer is waiting for apologies, reports naviny.by. He drew attention to the fact that on same very day Aliaksandr Lukashenka had a meeting with Belarusian writers and discussed the state of the Belarusian literature.