Natallia Radzina Appeals To OSCE: Take Immediate Action, They Kill People In Belarusian Prisons!
- 3.10.2023, 13:11
The fate of Mikalai Statkevich is of great concern.
Charter97.org Editor-in-Chief Natallia Radzina spoke at the OSCE Warsaw Human Dimension Conference.
“The number of political prisoners in Belarus is incalculable today. Neither human rights activists nor journalists know the current number of political prisoners in Belarus due to the inability to work within the country. We have now about 8,000-10,000 prisoners of conscience in our country according to various estimates.
The authorities not only arrest people illegally. Political prisoners are subjected to torture and inhumane treatment in jails. Some of them are kept in complete isolation for more than six months. We know nothing about many political prisoners for months: neither about their medical condition nor about their detention conditions. It became known that six political prisoners died in custody just this past year: people died because they were deprived of medical care, due to beatings by guards, or even committed suicide.
The fate of the real leader of the Belarusian opposition, Mikalai Statkevich, is of great concern. Nothing has been known about him for almost 8 months: no letters, calls, meetings with lawyers and visits with his wife are prohibited.
During the 29 years of Lukashenka's dictatorship, Mikalai Statkevich spent more than 10 years in prison.
He was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum security prison after the 2020 protests. The authorities are deliberately killing him because few people can withstand so many years of maximum security imprisonment.
Statkevich has been kept in solitary confinement for more than three years. He is serving his sentence in one of the toughest prisons in Belarus, in the city of Hlybokaye, in a prison basement, in a cell measuring 1 by 3 meters. They often throw him in a punishment cell, where conditions are even worse than in solitary confinement.
The 67-year-old politician fell ill with Covid-19 four times while in prison. He has serious heart problems, but even sending medications to prison is incredibly difficult: they often simply reject it. I am afraid that Mikalai Statkevich may no longer be alive and that the authorities are hiding information about his death.
We call on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to use all its mechanisms and influence and call on Lukashenka’s official representatives in the OSCE to provide information about Mikalai Statkevich, allow lawyers to see him and allow his wife to visit him, and also demand the immediate release of Mikalai Statkevich and other political prisoners.
The next trial of Palina Sharenda-Panasiuk, an activist of the European Belarus Civil Campaign, started in Belarus yesterday. A woman, a mother of two children, has had her imprisonment illegally extended for the third time. She is suffering torture in prison, and beatings, and is kept in a punishment cell for months under monstrous medieval conditions. They are really killing this heroic woman.
I'm calling the representatives of the OSCE member states to find an opportunity to take immediate action to release all Belarusian political prisoners.”