9 March 2021
More than 270 political prisoners are languishing in inhuman conditions right now. Several hundred more are being held as suspects in fabricated political cases.
We wrote already about torture, beatings, unsanitary conditions, physical and psychological violence, moral pressure in Belarusian prisons.
Illegal sentences or groundless arrests drive political prisoners to desperate steps.
One of the political prisoners is the founder of the telegram channel “Belarus of the Brain” Igor Losik. On March 11, Igor Losik got a new charge, as reported by Radio Liberty. After that, in the presence of an investigator and a lawyer, the political prisoner tried to cut his veins, and after that went on a dry hunger strike.
Igor Losik has been in custody for almost 9 months, he was detained on June 25. The blogger is charged with the Article 342 of the Criminal Code (Organization and preparation of actions that violate public order). In December, when a new criminal case was started against him, Losik went on an indefinite hunger strike, which he held for 42 days.
Igor Losik is far from being the only person who is trying to draw people's attention to the perpetrated excesses.
Blogger Sergei Petrukhin cut his veins in Mogilev prison. The reason was the terrible unsanitary conditions in the detention cell where he has been transferred to, as well as the unbearable situation of being kept together with a psychotic and pedophile.
Dmitry Furmanov, arrested in Grodno in so-called Tikhanovsky case, went on a hunger strike on March 11. He took this step "because of the terrible conditions in the Grodno prison."
The political prisoner Natalya Hershe has gone for the second time on a hunger strike due to the inhuman treatment of people in prison.
Grodno musician Igor Bantsar is on a dry hunger strike.
The head of the human rights center "Viasna" Ales Bialiatski told Current Time TV that the conditions of detention in Belarusian prisons are very bad. But most difficult it is for political prisoners there.
“The main task of a prison in Belarus today is to practically destroy you as a person ... It is clear that everything is done by order and according to the guidelines that come down from above.”
Pavel Latushko staits in his appeal “On desperate steps of Belarusian political prisoners”:
I urge the leadership of the European Union to take more decisive steps against the Lukashenka regime. Words have no impact on him, neither do concerns - only tough concrete steps. The lives of Belarusians are as important as the lives of citizens of the EU countries. The terror unleashed by the Belarusian dictator is unacceptable anywhere in the world, especially in the center of Europe in the 21st century“.
