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The crowd, gathered at the children’s shelter, demanded that the first-grader be allowed to return to his mother, Alen Lazarchik. The boy ended up in a shelter when his mother was detained Thursday for an identity check and did not pick him up from school, he said.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has harshly criticized the Belarusian authorities for using children as “political hostages” and said on Twitter that he was “shocked and dismayed”.
Lukashenko, facing international condemnation of controversial August 9 The election results and the violent crackdown on protests received the support of neighboring Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last Monday, the presidents met in person in the southern Russian city of Sochi. The government has increased pressure on opposition leaders who are arrested or forcibly expelled from the country.
Belarusian Attorney General’s Office on September 13. announced that protesters taking minor children to public demonstrations could be deprived of parental rights, Belta said, citing the head of the child protection department.
The warning came after comments by Deputy Prime Minister Ihari Piatryshenko last week that participating in protests with children puts them at risk, the state news agency reported.
Alena Lazarčik
© Stopkadras
The Artsiom boy has been detained at the shelter since Thursday, when A. Lazarčik did not remove him from the school and he could not be reached by phone. Lazarchik said she was detained for identification Thursday and held until 11 p.m. without access to a mobile phone.
The shelter management refused to return Artsiom’s mother without government permission because she had lost her maternity rights in the past, the state news agency Minsk Novosti reported, citing shelter director Marina Stankevich. Shelter Bloomberg declined to comment.
“I’m closing my eyes,” Lazarchik told the crowd on Saturday when the shelter did not allow her to take her son home.
Lazarčik told reporters that he had once temporarily lost his right to care for his eldest son due to political activism. The woman spent three days in prison in June after being found guilty of participating in an unauthorized rally before the elections, she said by phone.
According to the Viasna human rights center, more than 200 women were detained by the police during a weekly women’s march through the city.
Videos on the news site Tut.by show dozens of women crammed into police minibuses, including 73-year-old Nina Bahinskaya, who became a social media hero by resisting riot police in protests in the last month. The woman was released almost immediately.
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