According to preliminary, and perhaps incomplete, data, by the evening of 22 April, 19 representatives of the independent trade union movement in Belarus had been arrested between 19 and 21 April.
They are the leadership and employees of the office of the Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions (BKDP), as well as leaders and activists of the trade unions SPM (Free Trade Union of Metalworkers), SPB (Free Trade Union of Belarus), REP (Belarusian Union of Radioelectronic Workers) belonging to the BKDP.
The police raids place in Minsk and Polotsk. Among the detainees were young and elderly people, mothers of young children. Equipment and documents were confiscated.
Most of them were interrogated by the KGB, after which they were taken to the temporary detention centre of the State Security Committee.
According to Solidarnasts, the following people are still in captivity: Alexander Yaroshuk, Sergei Antusevich, Irina Bud-Gusaim, Nikolai Sharakh, Gennady Fedynich, Yana Malash, Vitaly Chichmarev, Mikhail Gromov, Vasily Beresnev, Dmitry Borodko, Alexander Evdokimchik, Miroslav Sobchuk and 80 others. SPM leader Alexander Bukhvostov is in hospital with a heart attack.
Igor Komlik, Elena Yeskova, Anna Dus, Nikolai Gerasimenko, Vadim Payvin and Yuri Belyakov were released after interrogations, and some after interrogations and a day in a pre-trial detention centre, and are under a non-disclosure agreement [about their detention]. They are also lawyers and journalists linked to the union.
On 21 April, Liza Merlyak, international secretary of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union (located in Salihorsk, which includes the Independent Miners’ Union and the BNP itself is a member of the BKDP) was also arrested and interrogated. After the interrogation she was released.
Solidarnasts [an opposition newspaper] notes that the independent trade unions in Belarus have remained the last organisations opposed to the present government. Today they are practically decapitated and purged.
The International Trade Union Confederation and IndustriALL Global Union have already issued statements against the massive repression of their Belarusian counterparts.
IndustriALL Global Union said that in March, the International Labour Organisation’s Committee on Freedom of Association had severely criticised the Belarusian government for its continued violation of the main recommendations of the 2004 ILO Commission of Inquiry. A number of trade union representatives who have testified before the ILO about the situation in Belarus in recent years are among those currently detained. IndustriALL has called on the ILO to intervene urgently in this situation.
Gazetaby