Even children of oppositionists face repressions

Rechytsa bank department No.323 of Belarusbank has secretly taken 539,000 rubles out from the account of 11-year-old Lida Shabetnkik. The girl gets allowance from the state after the death of her mother.

The father of the 11-year-old girl, the chairman of the regional branch of the Social democratic party (Hramada) Aleh Shabetnik said that no one from the bank representatives could explain him why the money had been collected from his daughter’s account. They only told that the money were taken as a fine, Radio Svaboda informs.

In February Aleh Shabetnik was in his absence sentenced to a fine 1 mln 550 thousand rubles ($720) for transporting materials of a statutory meeting of the Union of left parties and 5 copies of a bulletin “About cult of Lenin’s personality” though Ukrainian-Belarusian border.

Customs officers, and after that the court have made a conclusion that “information in the confiscated printed materials belonging to A. Shabetnik, could harm political interests and state security of the Republic of Belarus. It is banned for transporting through the customs border of Belarus”.

The activist hadn’t refused to pay the fine. Starting from March he transferred 200,000 rubles each month to the account stated by the court decision. He couldn’t transfer more because of his financial situation. Though the Belarusian law prohibits collecting “payments to the state from families with children”, it looks like some people had decided to speed up collection of the fine at the sake of an underage daughter of the activist.