Former political prisoner Oleksandr Kolchenko, who previously received 40 hours of community service for petty hooliganism, said that he and a number of other activists attended the event to support Belarusians in their struggle for freedom, but Ukrainian law enforcement officials decided to express solidarity with their colleagues from Belarus. He announced this via his Facebook page.
“I am inclined to regard the recent events that have happened to me this way: we came to the event to support the Belarusians in their struggle for freedom, against the dictatorship; the police and the judge expressed solidarity with their colleagues from Belarus. I see it that way”,- the message said.
Kolchenko noted the name of the judge who made the decision – Tetiana Levytska; and the police officers who drew up false reports – Ievhen Pohribnyi and Roman Kovtun, because “the country must know its heroes.”
“Police arbitrariness, obstruction of a peaceful assembly and the issuance of a court decision on the basis of apparently false police reports, without the admission of either journalists or a witness to the trial, is just another broken bottom in the list of many previous ones. Of course, our situation with freedom of speech and peaceful assemblies is better than our neighbors’ to the east and north. But, at the same time, we must admit that over these 6 years we have not moved far from the (post) soviet times”,- he added.
It should be reminded that on August 10, a former political prisoner Oleksandr Kolchenko was detained near the Belarusian embassy in Kyiv. He received 40 hours of community service for petty hooliganism.