On 11 April 2012 Alena Lebiadzinskaya attended an event commemorating the victims of the last year’s terrorist attack in Minsk metro. Ms Lebiadzinskaya, herself being a metro blast survivor, held up a poster that read “The government refused to help”. Security officers in plain clothes took away the poster immediately.

“An act of terrorism is a crime against the state, not against me, Alena Lebiadzinskaya, personally, so I asked the state for a little help with medicine and clothes, and now what I got is another injury. What for? My poster just said that I had asked the government for help, but I was always told that they there was nothing they could do for me”, Ms Lebiadzinskaya explains.

On 11 April last year, when the bomb blasted in the Kastrychnitskaya metro station, Lebiadzinskaya was on an escalator.

“I was there when the ceiling collapsed. I was taken to hospital immediately, examined and offered hospitalisation, but I wrote a refusal and agreed to be treated at home. On the morning of the 12 April I received a call from the clinic telling me to come there immediately. I had a cough and fever, I was vomiting something black for several days. I applied for help from the commission which provided financial assistance to the terrorist attack survivors. They said I was to submit forensic medical examination findings. However, for some reason, the examination showed that what I had was bronchitis”.

Alena Lebiadzinskaya claims that the only aid she recieved from the Minsk city council was “one litre of sunflower oil, a kilo of sugar and a few oranges”.

“I was even more frightened than a year ago, during the explosion”
After the incident with the poster, Ms Lebiadzinskaya laid flowers at the newly opened memorial to the explosion victims, and went home by metro. “At the exit of the Spartyunaya metro station I was approached by two unknown men who dragged me to a minivan. I screamed “Help!”, but they hit me on the vehicle and injured my forehead and knees. Then they took away my cell phone. I was taken to Central police station where they asked me whether it was I who brought the poster with a photograph, and whether or not they took it away. It seemed to me that the police officers themselves were confused about why I was brought there and did not know what to do with me”, said Lebiadzinskaya .

She was held at the police for several hours and then let go: “At 22:30 I was already at home and called for an ambulance. The doctors stated that I had a hypertensive crisis and head injury, and suggested that I go to hospital”.

“I do not understand: even if I did something wrong when I held up the poster, they could have just come up, asked me to remove the poster, could have just warned me. But why would they act like this! I was even more frightened than a year ago, during the explosion. The worst thing was that a minute before the arrest I called my daughter and said that I would be home in 10 minutes. Imagine how my relatives felt: exactly a year after the blast they could not reach me for 4 hours”, says Alena Lebiadzinskaya.

The police refused to comment on the situation. The press service of the Minsk City Police has informed that every day several dozens of people are detained for different reasons and therefore “I can not help you with specific information on that particular person”.

***

On 11 April 2011 the bomb blasted on Kastrychnitskaya metro station in the centre of Minsk. As a result of the explosion, 15 people died, hundreds were injured. On 14 March 2012 it became known that president Aliaksandr Lukashenka had refused to pardon Dzmitry Kanavalau and Uladzislau Kavaliou who had been found guilty and sentenced to death for the attack in the Minsk metro, despite the protests of Belarusian and the international community. On 16 March 2012 Kanavalau and Kavaliou were executed.

Related articles

Belarusian "metro bombers" executed

Belarusian authorities against UN considering the complaint on the right to life violation

President vows “total cleansing” after terrorist act in Minsk