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ARRESTED: The two footballers Sergej Kozeka and Pavel Rasolko play for the Krumkachy team. Photo: FC Krumkachy
Two soccer players from a team known for supporting the opposition in Belarus were arrested on Sunday and beaten by riot police.
The first wave of demonstrations in Minsk was met with brutal violence by the police, where, among other things, protesters were fired upon and thousands were imprisoned. Then came a week of almost peace. Now the grip is tightened again.
Background: They want to overthrow the “last dictator of Europe”
The Institute for the Study of War warns that the conflict between the regime and the protesters is becoming militarized, after large numbers of soldiers, police and security forces have been deployed in the streets.
During Sunday’s demonstration, heavily armed police and military, dressed in black, wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, had blocked the streets with metal fences and armored vehicles.
Horror stories from Belarus: Treated worse than animals
REALIZATION: Black-clad riot police resolutely carry away a protester in Minsk on August 30. Photo: TUT.BY
New arrests
140 people were arrested, most of them random protesters, but also some arrests of the opposition and journalists.
Two of those arrested on Sunday in Minsk are the two footballers Pavel Rasolko and Sergei Kozeka. They are said to have been beaten and seriously injured during riots between police and protesters..
Kozeka, who in 2012 lost the trick to Liverpool in qualifying for the Champions League with his previous club Gomel, suffered a broken spine and is out of action for at least a month.
The club they both play for discusses the matter themselves on Instagram, “we wish our boys good health,” it says there, and in English the club posted this message on Twitter yesterday:
Support the people
They both play for the team Krumkachy, which means “raven” in Belarusian, and is a team known for supporting the demand for Belarus to be more independent from Russia.
The team’s players have joined the opposition during the ongoing conflict, and the Belarusian Football Federation previously warned the club for posting a photo of the players posing in jerseys with the legend “We are with the people.”
The two players were first charged with kicking a police car. But the club’s director, Oleg Davidovich tells the newspaper Tribuna.com that the two of them did nothing wrong.
– They were accused of having participated in the attack on a minibus with police officers, but note that the incident bus had no identification and that the men on board were not wearing uniforms, says Davidovich.
– We have collected many video clips showing that our boys were not involved in the incident either. They came from training and had a bag of wet training clothes when they went to pass a police check, says the director.
The Belarusian Interior Ministry has confirmed that two footballers were arrested on suspicion of being involved in the civilian minibus attack. But on Monday night, after the case received a lot of publicity in Belarus, the two players were released and will not be charged.
Popular team
Maksim Hacak (32), editor of the independent newspaper Telegraf, tells VG by phone from Minsk that the team was popular because it was sponsored by the private business community, not the state, and because it uses the Belarusian language instead of Russian.
– The team has supported the opposition and is popular with many because of what the team stands for. But with no support from the state, only from the private business sector, the team has struggled with the economy and will be relegated to the second division, Hacak says.
PROTESTS: Demonstrations continue in Minsk, although riot police tried to stop the protests. Photo: TUT.BY
He does not believe that the latest wave of arrests will end the demonstrations, demanding the resignation of 66-year-old President Alexander Lukashenko, called “Europe’s last dictator.”
Lukashenko has demanded that the demonstrations stop, but he is clearly not being heard, because on Sunday there were huge crowds in the streets. At the same time, we see that most of the detainees are released after a fairly short time and that parts of the police would not use violence against protesters, says Hacak.
The protests have spread across Belarus after Lukashenko claimed on the first weekend of August that he was re-elected with up to 80 percent of the vote. There were serious doubts about the outcome of the elections and large sectors of the population now accuse the regime of electoral fraud.
