Mikalai Statkevich receives threats of new punishment

Political prisoner's wife received two letters from her husband after a long pause.

“The letters of October 11 and 15 were sent from Mahilou on the same day – October 19, though under law censorship procedures should take only three days,” Maryna Adamovich says. “It caused the long pause in correspondence. By the way, Mikalai writes it now takes more time to deliver letters from me and his children to him. I don't know what is the reason.”

Mikalai Statkevich informs about ongoing attempts to scare him with new sanctions, statkevich.org reports. Maryna Adamovich says he describes an attempt to punish him for drying brown bread instead of keeping it in a plastic bag. “We receive brown and white bread in the morning. Brown bread is very bad and wet, it definitely doesn't comply with quality standards. I cut it into slices with a plastic knife and leave it open to make it stale. Inmates usually eat only bread crust,” she quotes.

Mikalai demands to observe the law in relation to prisoners. He raised a question several times why nine months passed, but he hasn't received the things they should give him monthly in accordance with the law, though money for these purposes are regularly withdrawn from his military pension. “I mean clothes and articles of daily necessity,” Maryna Adamovich explains. “Every inmate is supposed to receive a body hygiene kit: soap, toilet paper, tooth paste and disposable razors.”

The political prisoner writes he was promised during nuncio's visit that he would be allowed to visit an orthodox priest. But it wasn't fulfilled by October 15. Mikalai Statkevich says the prison deputy head responsible for ideology, who gave this promise, asked Statkevich which prison, this one or that in Shklou, he liked more. Maryna Adamovich says the political prisoner regarded this question as a threat attempt in “a derisive tone”.

The women also worries heating wasn't turned on in Mahilou at the moment of writing the letter and it was cold in prison. “I hope the situation changed. Inmates already received warm jackets and hats, so cold shouldn't be a problem,” Maryna Adamovich says.

It should be reminded that Mikalai Statkevich was arrested after a protest rally against the rigged results of the presidential elections on December 19, 2010. On May 26, 2011, the court of Partyzanski district of Minsk sentenced him to 6 years in a medium security penal colony.