Organizers of Chernobyl Anniversary March Want It to Run along Minsk’s Main Thoroughfare

The organizing committee for an annual march called Charnobylski Shlyakh (Path of Chernobyl) on April 3 adopted the route of the demonstration.

The march, which is to be staged in Minsk on April 26 on the occasion of the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, is supposed to start on the square in front of the National Academy of Sciences at 2 p.m. and run along Independence Avenue, Minsk’s main thoroughfare, to Independence Square, where a rally would be held, Viktar Karnyayenka, deputy chairman of the unregistered Movement for Freedom, told BelaPAN.

“This is the route that the first 1989 Chernobyl march took,” Mr. Karnyayenka said. “In 1989, the government, political parties and the public were of the same opinion about the disaster and that march passed off peacefully. We hope that things will be the same this year, but it’s most likely that we’ll not be allowed to march along Independence Avenue. We are ready to consider other routes.”

According to Mr. Karnyayenka, former presidential candidate Alyaksandr Milinkevich, who leads the Movement for Freedom, representatives of the Belarusian Popular Front, the United Civic Party, and the Belarusian Social Democratic Party “Hramada,” and leaders of a number of non-governmental organizations are expected to file an application for permission in early next week.

Mr. Milinkevich, who chairs the organizing committee, has said that the objective of this year’s Charnobylski Shlyakh will be to “give an assessment to the government’s policy regarding the minimization of the disaster’s consequences in contaminated areas,” and step up protests against the planned construction of a nuclear power plant in the “authoritarian post-Chernobyl Belarus”.

In Belarus under Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s rule, Chernobyl marches have become one of the largest annual protests staged in the Belarusian capital by opponents of the government.

Some 3,000 people took part in last year's Charnobylski Shlyakh and 10,000 in 2006, when the 20th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster was observed. A crowd of up to 50,000 took part in the march on the 10th anniversary, during which demonstrators overturned cars and clashed with riot police. Dozens were injured and more than 200 were arrested.