Zmitser Bandarenka sent from hospital to prison today

Doctors insist that the political prisoner needs at least half a year of aftercare treatment.

Today the coordinator of “European Belarus” civil campaign Zmitser Bandarenka is to be discharged form 5th clinical hospital of Minsk after a serious spinal column surgery (bilateral herniation of intervertebral disk was removed) and sent back to the remand prison of the Internal Affairs Ministry in Valadarski Street in Minsk.

Charter97.org website has been informed about that by the wife of the political prisoner, Volha Bandarenka.

“I felt secure when Zmitser stayed in the 5th hospital, I was happy about every day of rehabilitation course, but now I am in despair again, I am distressed. Everyone around are saying only one thing: he needs thorough and long rehabilitation. Now it is not known yet where Zmitser would be sent. I hope, to a prison hospital, not to the cell. But after that there will be a transfer prison and the penal colony, anyway. And Zmitser needs a rehabilitation course of half a year at least. If he is not given that, the doctor said that he would suffer from chronic pain, his right leg would not recover, and the situation would be even worse,” Volha Bandarenka said.

Recently the political prisoner filed an application to the remand prison chief with a request to change the penalty for a milder one as he had served one third of the imprisonment term. As said by Bandarenka’s wife, he does not have much hope that the authorities would adopt such decision, he has a right to file such a petition under the law.

Volha Bandarenka quotes some passages from Zmitser’s letter:

“I asked a doctor in exercise therapy to offer me a set of exercises for rehabilitation in the upright position. She started to shout: “Upright position! It is impossible! You must be out of your mind. You must be only lying for a few months!” I told that in a week I could be sent to the penal colony, and there I would be able to make exercises in the upright position only. She said: “Remember, in prone position only, forget about exercises the upright position.” I said: it’s a forced-labour camp, and so on. She became nervous: “You need serious gradual rehabilitation for half a year as a minimum!” it was nothing new for me. I am living one day at a time. Come what may, it would mean that it should be this way.”