Street in Washington to be named in honor of Belarusian Roman Bondarenko killed by security forces

According to Belarusians in Washington DC and Metro Area, on December 8, the Dupont Circle committee in the American capital adopted a resolution in support of the campaign of the local Belarusian diaspora to assign a symbolic name to the street.

The resolution says about the tragic death of Bondarenko, repressions against journalists who covered the events, as well as support for events in the resolutions of the White House and the US Senate. It also mentions the local tradition of naming the streets on which the embassies of authoritarian countries are located, in honor of prominent dissidents and victims of such regimes, in particular. As an example, Boris Nemtsov Square, Jamal Khashoggi Street and Liu Xiaobo Square are given.

The Belarusian-American community chose Roman Bondarenko through an open vote in a Facebook group. More than three hundred users voted for Bondarenko, which provided him with a significant advantage over other names.

It should be noted that at present, the renaming into Washington is possible not earlier than the second anniversary of the death of a person, but the Belarusian community hopes to find a way to speed up this process.

The attack on Roman Bondarenko took place on the evening of November 11 last year. Upon learning that unknown persons in civilian clothes had come to the courtyard of his house, who began to tear off the white-red-white ribbons from the fence, he went outside and asked why the visitors were doing this. In response, they began to beat him.

After that, according to eyewitnesses, Roman was “professionally detained”, loaded into a minibus and taken away in an unknown direction. Subsequently, it turned out that he was taken to the police station. An hour and a half later, the severely beaten resident of Minsk was taken to the hospital in critical condition. There he was diagnosed with numerous bruises and cerebral edema. Despite the efforts of the doctors and an emergency operation, it was not possible to save Bondarenko: he died on November 12.