The Swedish organizers of a stunt to parachute teddy bears over Belarus rejected a summons from the country’s KGB in an open letter to the Belarusian president on Tuesday.
Representatives of Studio Total earlier said they were ready to testify in Minsk if the government guarantees their immunity from prosecution.
“There is the issue of our demand for immunity. Your response to this has been that we shall be treated with the 'same justice that KGB treats all suspects, witnesses and victims.' Might we guess that is your sense of humor?” the group said.
They also said the planned meeting was to be held in the Swedish Embassy, on neutral ground, not in the KGB headquarters.
“To change the location from the cozy back garden of an embassy to a concrete bunker where people have been tortured for a hundred years does not seem a fair replacement,” Studio Total said.
In return, the group “proudly invites the Dictator Aleksander Lukashenko to our house in Skane, Sweden.”
“We will arrange and pay for lodging, food, taxis and all that. We will also, as we promised, tell you everything you want to know on how to cheat your expensive air defense systems,” the letter reads. “Our only demand is that you behave as politely as you can. No threats of torture and the likes and that you release all the political prisoners.”
A spokesman for the Belarusian KGB said they were not surprised by the response.
“Investigators expected such a response, they [Studio Total] are well aware of committing a punishable offense,” spokesman Alexander Antonovich said.
He added that Belarus “expects an official response from Lithuania and Sweden to our international criminal investigation requests.”
“If we put aside emotions, pseudo-democratic matters and other subtleties, then a law-enforcement structure in any state will make a clear conclusion: illegally crossing the border of an independent state is nothing else but a criminal offense,” the spokesman said.
On July 4, a Swedish public relations company chartered a light aircraft which invaded Belarusian airspace to drop about 800 teddy bears with pro-democracy messages highlighting the lack of human rights in the former Soviet republic.
The stunt led to a row between Belarus and Sweden and the expulsion of Swedish diplomats from Minsk. Belarus has also withdrawn its embassy staff from Stockholm.
